A New Cause
by Traitor of All Traitors
Summary: Where the madness ended, a new darkness will begin, one that leads to light…if those that are tasked with leading the way can endure the wrath of those that stand against them…as well as each other. The Angels descend, the dead talk, myths and legends come to life, and judgment comes to more than just Japan. All of the world isn't safe…but is it in any greater danger than before?
1. To save one's soul

Creation began on 11-15-13

Creation ended on 11-16-13

Neon Genesis Evangelion

A New Cause: To save one's soul

A/N: I present to you the sequel to _A Maddening Cause_. This chapter will serve as a sort of prequel to the plot you will expect to be one of change. Read this!

For a short while, he felt disoriented, restless, and had a sense of clarity in the darkness he found himself in. During the time he was there, he had developed a good link with the soul he was with when they drew their first breaths, and found that he had forfeited his spot in Heaven just to be with him in the darkness where they could only assume was a place that either Hell or worse than that. The only bright side to this darkness was that they seemed to be alone; there wasn't even the presence of two people that were the dual personalities of one of them.

"I didn't think Hell would be so…quiet," said one of the two.

"I didn't think it would be like this, either," responded the other.

"Was Heaven beautiful?"

"It was. Everything was peaceful. Everything was perfect. Nobody's troubled, desires more than what they get after dying, and there were those that, before something terrible happened to the world to ravage it, would often leave Heaven just to experience life again."

"Oh. The old, reincarnation gig."

"Yeah."

"Did you ever…well…"

"I did."

"What?"

"You were going to ask me if I spoke with any deities during my time in Heaven. I did. Not many of them are at all happy with what people, a few of them undeniably bad, had done to change the world…and the fate of many. One I met did say that something odd was going to happen to change things. I wasn't really paying attention to the things that were spoken, but a lot of kids that lost their lives years ago were pleased to hear about it."

"It must be something of immense greatness to speak about."

Suddenly, an intense light flared upon them from above their heads, illuminating them to their dark environment. One was a boy in his early teens…and the other was a baby of the same gender. It was Shinji and Mako, former members of the Ikari family until fate changed their fates. Shinji looked as though he had some sense of unity, judging by the look of his face, and the baby that was his older twin seemed bright enough to talk like Shinji, but without much of the malice he had when he was alive and abused years ago.

"What's going on?" Shinji asked his twin, who levitated enough feet off the dark floor (or what could've been the floor) to meet his head.

"I've come for you two," a female voice uttered out from the light, just as a shadowed figure came.

"Who are you?" Mako asked.

A woman, quite attractive, yet not of Asian descent, dressed in a flowing, green and brown dress, with a flowing mix of blond and ebony hair, a lock of which on the left forefront was as green as the grass, eyes that were as red as… Well, as red as the blood both boys were sure no longer flowed under their flesh, and a face that possessed a balanced degree of kindness and innocence to go with her beauty.

"Shinji and Mako, brothers in life and death," the woman addressed them. "I've seen many twins, but not like you two; one twin whose destiny was set in ancient stone…and the other whose destiny was nonexistent. Yet, you changed things by going down a different path. Of course, I mean you, Shinji, even if that path was one of cold vengeance. And you, Mako, you gave up your place in the paradise of the afterlife to be with him, which is something not many innocent souls do."

"Are you…some sort of demon sent to enslave our souls?" Mako asked her.

The woman walked closer to them, revealing a pair of slender legs that wore sandals that showed off such nice feet, probably befitting a type of supermodel (if this woman was one). She raised her arms to them and placed her left hand on Shinji's shoulder and her right hand on Mako's head.

"I'm no demon," she explained her status. "I'm an embodiment of the world you both were made to leave behind, here to offer you what might be a good proposition for you. Oh, listen to me, speaking like it's nothing but a business deal. That makes me seem cruel, which I don't want to be unless I need to be. Think of it as more of…an opportunity, really."

"What kind of opportunity?" Shinji asked her.

"Doing some real good that is to save the world of the living from sure ruination. To undo the sins of those that wanted what was best left alone and restore life to the souls that were taken…and, when all is said and done and the Earth healed of its wounds…those that do the work of many that ensures justice will be bestowed new life."

"New life?" Mako questioned.

"Revival, resurrection, reincarnation," the lady explained. "Whichever way you wish to view it."

"What good is new life when my previous one was one of pain and death?" Shinji questioned her. "I killed, harmed…and fell. Even if I wanted to do some good, returning to life where people looked down upon me isn't something I could desire for a reward or anything."

"You wouldn't have to return to that sort of life," the lady told him. "I mean, while serving a higher purpose for a time, you'd remain as you were in your previous life, but after your task is fulfilled, you'd have the choice of returning to life with a different future. You'd be a different person. There's life, death, rebirth, revival, what have you. And…there's also the revenge one seeks that is to save their soul, which has been considered the ultimate form of vengeance."

"How so?" Mako asked her.

"Revenge to save one's soul…is no different from an eater of sins that absolves the souls of those who have sinned, allowing them the peace of knowing that their lives have been cleansed of darkness. But sometimes, just sometimes, the worst of things, like a sin, is a necessity for the world to survive. Things get worse before they begin to get better." She explained.

"So…the world must be harmed further before it can be healed?" Shinji realized. "Is there no other way of healing the world through other means? Like…recycling or growing more crops? I wasn't into reading before I died, but I hear people say it enough times to get the message. Garbage everywhere, people starving, it's a nightmare."

"And whose fault do you think it is because of this nightmare?"

"Everyone's at fault," went Mako.

"But the people in charge of the world, those that think, just because they have the most resources, like unlimited finances or political influence or access to military powers, they can dictate the fate of others. People like scientists that misuse and abuse their power that should be used to make people's lives better, instead only cause further harm. People like the police or military, who should protect and serve the innocent, instead overlook the pain and suffering the greedy and foul-hearted inflict upon them. Because they abuse their authority upon the rest of the world, everyone follows in their darkest footsteps, repeating the cold circle of spreading the poison that is killing the world. Children murder each other over things that shouldn't matter, like race or status, families separate due to the failures of maintaining proper relations, they don't tolerate the good people that want to be with those just like them, even when they're on the same gender, they don't teach to keep those from falling behind. But these are merely symptoms that I'm speaking of. You know the disease, you two. You know the root, the cause of these symptoms."

Shinji sighed and uttered, "People called me things, like crazy or insane. As much as I could see with some clarity back when I was alive, it was only when I inflicted pain and death upon others, I could understand how far people had fallen into madness, into insanity."

"That's well-spoken, Shinji."

"But what makes you think you or anyone can do anything about all of that?"

"Insane, Shinji and Mako, which is from the Latin, meaning 'unclean'. Those from the past, those whose lives were taken or ended by those that abuse power that are granted ancient and modern knowledge and charged with new purpose, they…are part of the great cleansing that will heal all. It's people like you…who will make things right."

The boys looked away from her, and the lady sighed.

"It's purgatory, your time back in the world would be, but not too long," she told them. "Think about it. I've already tasked three old souls with their purpose, so I need a fourth soul, but you two would count as one. One side that performs, another side that follows, guides and accompanies, like a guardian of sorts. Sometimes…what I do, what I want to do, to help the people…isn't enough, and they deserve much more than what they're given. And it's people like you…that deserve a future that's free of hurt, abandonment…exploitation and manipulation, to have the happiness you show equal to the happiness others show you. I'll be back when you come to your decision."

The boys turned to face her again and responded, "What would we need to do?"

-x-

Straining, a young boy that resembled Shinji before he died opened his eyes, seeing a light hung above his head. He was on a cot in what seemed to be a warehouse.

A face came into the boy's perception not too long after; it was the same woman that showed up earlier to meet the deceased twins.

"How do you feel?" She asked him.

"…Empty," he told her, and she gave a small smile.

"It's common. You're not the first person to feel this way after accepting a position that's no different from a general or some other authority figure." She explained to him. "And I can see he found his way back with you."

The boy turned his head to the left, seeing a see-through baby wrapped in a red blanket, looking at him. They had managed to find each other on the way back.

"I take it that they're the newest members to the cause to do the planet some new good?" The woman looked up ahead at a shadowed man that just appeared.

"Give them a while," she told the man. "When you returned, you were no better off."

"Well, with their return to this plane of existence, a mere half-life compared to the life of wandering ghost or revenant, comes the sign of change that is necessary. And there's no doubt that she will be waiting for them to get her." The man said.

The baby disappeared, leaving the boy alone with the two.

"Who…is she?" He asked them.

"Your mare," the woman answered. "Every member of the group you and your brother are apart of needs one. Eh…Death?"

"D…Death?" The boy realized, and felt strength returning to him.

"Yes, heh-heh," the lady giggled. "That will be your name. Death of the Restorative."

"My name is…Death…of the Restorative," the boy accepted.

A/N: Here is the first chapter! Please, give a review and let me know what you expect from it! I'm sure some of you can take a guess at what there is to expect, along with your questions of who these two people that weren't identified are. The next chapter will come in due time. Peace out!


	2. He walks among us once more

Creation began on 11-16-13

Creation ended on 11-25-13

Neon Genesis Evangelion

A New Cause: He walks among us once more

It had been almost two weeks since the Third Angel arrived and remained where it stood in Tokyo-3, the former fortress city that was abandoned. And almost three weeks since NERV's reputation was left in tatters. As the hours continued to pass by, no attempt was made on the enemy that did nothing more than take up the space it occupied; because of its AT-Field, nothing short of a dozen N² weapons could probably do the trick, but nobody was going to destroy a city that cost billions to create and could still be lived in just to eliminate an enemy that made no other moves on them. And so, the threat stayed where it was. While Unit-02 had been sent out a second time to try and deal with it, it was met with the same results of defeat. This left NERV on constant standby until such a time when the Angel could be destroyed was discovered.

"This is ridiculous," went Misato to Ritsuko, as they went down the hall to the cafeteria to get something to eat. "The Angel's right out there, and we can't do anything."

"It's not we can just talk with it," Ritsuko responded, moving around in a motorized wheelchair; ever since she lost the use of her legs, she had become very bitter and more into her work than her friend cared to admit.

"It's been, what, over three weeks since that day?" Misato asked her.

"It wouldn't matter if it had been three months," she countered. "Everyone affected by that day still turn their heads around just to make sure that they're not being followed by his ghost."

"Since when do you believe in ghosts?"

"Since the very day that mother of his just showed up, thinking she could stop him, only to be proven wrong. He didn't stop until after his father and the First Child were killed."

"And this has nothing to do with you losing your legs?"

"Ladies," they stopped talking and looked up ahead, seeing Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki, who, despite his part in the deaths of many innocents, wasn't looked at with contempt by many, as Shinji could've probably killed him, too.

"Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki," Misato addressed. "We were just…"

"At ease," he cut her off. "It's a touchy subject that everyone want to forget, like it was nothing more than a nightmare. I still can't forget that, despite the horror people went through, I never got to see him smile like he did when he was little. He didn't know what was going on, and we still attempted to exploit him. I almost thought I could see something in his eyes that was still good."

"Maybe he wasn't deceiving you," went Ritsuko, "but there's such thing as good in him. Maybe when he was little, but then he changed into a…"

They noticed the look on Fuyutsuki's face when reminded that Shinji ceased being a happy, carefree child…and was looked at as an abomination of mankind with no capacity for remorse or guilt.

"Uh, Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki?" The three turned to see a young, lady technician with ebony hair, probably in her early-twenties, holding a piece of paper. "This was faxed over from a copy shop in Tokyo-2…and…it was instructed to be handed to you."

The elder accepted the paper from her and looked at. It was some sort of message or note addressed to him, reading, _"One city down, and seven more to go. In order to heal the world ravaged by those that abuse their authority, many will either suffer or step aside. Back off and you'll know survival, stand against us…and you won't be so lucky. Spread the word."_

"A threat?" Misato questioned.

"A warning," Fuyutsuki corrected. "Almost like the message Shinji left when he arrived here from the institute…except this part here, _'one city down, and seven more to go'_, doesn't make sense."

"Probably somebody wants to see eight cities in the country emptied?" Ritsuko suggested.

"Or maybe some religious cult of fanatics that believe these Angels are actually God's messengers and that it's wrong to try and kill them. Except that we haven't been able to deal with the current Angel up in the city," added Misato.

But somehow, Fuyutsuki didn't believe this message to be associated to anybody or even a group of people with a religious M.O.; there was just something other than the lack of religious themes in the note and no mention of a group name or any other piece of personal information. There was nothing but the fact that there would be seven more cities that would probably be attacked by Angels and that people should either die or walk away.

-x-

GASP! Yui, who was sleeping, awoke from an intense nightmare that was no different from what happened over three weeks ago. She was covered in sweat, panting and looking at the drawings that Shinji drew during his time in the Japan Institute of Insanity, the same place she was in right now, only the ones on the wall were positive. Her most recent dream was of herself on a beach, with white sand, a dark sky and a sea of blood. She had seen a man laying on the shore and went over to him, only to back away because the man was not only dead, but his face had been removed from his head, leaving only a messy spot that had bled out.

Lately, she'd been having nothing but nightmares, probably a sign of the world despising her for her choices, more personal than general. She then groaned in minor discomfort from the healing impalement injury she got from Shinji; she felt the pain of this injury every time she woke up from bad dreams. Fortunately, she wasn't in any danger from such an injury.

Knock-knock-knock! Somebody was at her cell door.

"Who…who is it?" She asked the person outside.

The door opened and one of the guards stepped inside.

"Pack your things, miss," he told her. "You're being transferred elsewhere."

"On whose authority?" She questioned, and another person stepped inside; this was a man she hadn't seen in a long time. "Hei-Bai?"

The man, Hei-Bai, well into his late-thirties, dressed in a business suit, with the ebony hair Yui possessed, stood in front of her and said, "Don't think it the wrong way, sis. Nothing would've made me feel a little better than to be away from you for the rest of my life. Unfortunately, Father just had to call me and ask me to come home from the States after sending me there for my own protection."

"Your protection? From who?"

"From you!"

"M…me?"

"Do you honestly believe Father would let me stay in Japan, knowing that one of his two daughters, you, went and helped a bunch of people he wanted nothing to do with cause problems that you simply can't fix with any brand of science? No, Yui, after that day half the world went away, after he found out you went and married a lunatic thug at that university, he had me shipped off to the States to live with his American friends there, where I wouldn't be exploited or looked down upon. But even there, the past came back to bite me in the ass! It's been allover the media on what happened at that city nobody wants to go anywhere near, about how your son, whom I knew nothing of, not even of what he did years ago to end up the way he did, causing the deaths of over three-hundred people within the course of ten days. My life got turned upside-down, all because of hidden knowledge on a boy I didn't know existed until after Father called me and told me I had to come back here. My own girlfriend even left me, saying that she couldn't be with somebody whose nephew was a killer; it would've been guilt by association, something I already suffer from being related to you. I would've told him that I wanted to stay in the States, but that wasn't up to discussion, as he's already dying from his renal failure and wants what's left of the family to be nearby. And some people want you to work for them on something you did years back."

"Hei-Bai… I was young back then…" Yui tried to explain herself.

"Young and stupid," he cut her off. "Now, look at yourself. You're the scapegoat for your son's crimes, since he couldn't be locked away or executed after dying of all those factors he had. I don't even want to know how and why his brain ended up being the size of a golf ball. Honestly, I don't want to talk about a boy I never got to know…or the other boy your husband killed by accident…or you, who tarnished our family. Period. I don't want to hear any of it. Just get your things and we'll leave."

He turned around and left her alone. The guard followed suit, closing the door and allowing the woman her privacy.

"I already know I'm a scapegoat," she told herself, and got out of bed and grabbed her coat.

-x-

…Knock-knock-knock! One of the security staff of the institution went to the main gate outside in the parking lot and pulled open a viewing slot to see who was knocking on the gate on a day when visiting hours weren't allowed. The person on the other side was wearing a heavy coat with the hood up, so their face was covered.

"What do you want?" The guard asked.

"I'm looking for Yui Ikari," the person answered in a male voice, though it sounded empty and cold.

"There aren't any visiting hours today," the guard informed him.

"It's not a visit," the man responded, holding up a large envelop. "I just need to make sure that she got this. Nothing of any dangerous significance, but of necessary significance. It's more of a parting of the ties that used to bind. You see, another woman gave me a second chance, set me free, and I decided she needed to know, if you catch my drift."

The guard opened the mail slot at the bottom of the gate, and the envelop was slipped through.

"Fine, whatever," he told the man. "I'll make sure she gets it. Now piss off somewhere."

The man then walked away, not offended by the guard's lack of respect toward him, but deciding that some security guards could learn some respect. But he had to deal with another matter that required his special attention.

-x-

"…What's so special about those boxes full of drawings?" Hei-Bai asked his sister, as they were getting ready to be escorted to the car that would transport them to their father's location.

"They were Shinji's," she explained, leaving it simple.

Hei-Bai sighed and asked, "Are they any good?"

"Unlike anything else I've seen him capable of."

Before they could even get outside into the parking lot, one of the guards approached them.

"Yui Ikari!" He shouted.

"Okay, what'd she do this time?" Hei-Bai questioned, and the guard handed over a large envelop.

"Some guy came by and wanted to give you this," the guard explained, and Yui accepted it, opened it up, and pulled out a piece of paper.

"What in the…" Yui gasped, as it was a drawing, almost like the ones Shinji spent most of his life locked away drawing every day.

It depicted Shinji, looking as he did before he passed away, carrying his bag of guns and ammo, wielding a gun in his right hand, and accompanied by a baby that looked exactly like Mako before he died, wrapped in a red blanket, floating beside his twin as he walked toward an unknown destination in what looked like a city in the background.

"Huh?" Hei-Bai reacted to the drawing, wondering who would send his disgrace of a sister something like this. "Who dropped this off?"

"I never saw the guy's face," the guard told him. "He said a woman set him free, gave him a second chance or something like that."

"Yui, does this mean anything to you?" Hei-Bai asked her.

But Yui didn't answer her brother. It wasn't because she didn't think he'd believe her, but because of how disturbingly similar it was to Shinji's other drawings made later in his years. The details were so intricate, so surreal and almost nightmarish that she couldn't fool herself into thinking it wasn't any different from her son's work. No, this had to be her son's work, only more effort went into making it.

-x-

The worst part of trying to own land outside of the abandoned city that was Tokyo-3…was trying to keep track of the number of animals that were fortunate enough to survive Second Impact. But that was made more difficult by trying to breed them and keep them in check. The Hakone Animal Preservation Farm was facing hard times made harder due to the presence of the Third Angel being a mockery of the giant statue in the States, only larger and looking like it was made of flesh and seaweed.

"…Hey, we got problems with the horses again," a woman yelled to one of her co-worker, standing outside the third stable house that held the younger generation of horses they were breeding after they had some sent to other parts of the ravaged planet that needed them. "They sound more agitated than they were last week."

"Coming," a man responded over a walkie-talkie, and the woman saw a golf cart coming her way.

Two men got out and approached the woman.

"Just how agitated are we talking?" One of the men, carrying a medical case, asked her.

"Very," she responded, and the cries of the horses inside the stables became louder.

"Okay, let's go see what the problem is. Probably just another pregnant mare throwing a fit."

"Except that there hasn't been a pregnant mare since the seventh one from eight months ago."

"You never know."

They then entered the stables and saw several horses of various colors (black, red, tawny, brown, etc.), in their stables, neighing like crazy, but restrained so they couldn't cause harm to each other.

"Wait a minute," the second guy expressed, looking at the horses in their agitation, seeing the way they brought up their front legs and reared their heads. "This isn't agitation, it's fear. These horses are frightened by something."

Thump! The woman's left foot kicked over some old saddle equipment, and found that, due to the time she spent caring for the horses, one of the saddles was missing; there were seven saddles in total, and she saw only six of them.

"Was there any scheduled horseback riding today?" She asked the men.

"No," the one with the medical kit answered her, as the other guy wandered further into the building and disappeared around a corner.

"Hey, when did we breed this horse over here?" He called out to them, and they came to see.

"Which one?" The woman asked, seeing several other horses of various colors and patterns.

"That one on the left, with the head that looks like those of a unicorn," he identified the one, and it was an unusual horse, looking like a silvery unicorn.

"Hey, I don't know anything about this horse!" The other guy said, and saw that it had a saddle on its back, like it had been recently set to be taken out. "There's someone behind it!"

The woman then took out a gun from behind her and raised it at the strange horse.

"This is medical and security of the APF!" She shouted. "Come out from behind the horse, out into the open, quietly!"

A pair of legs appeared from behind the horse, wearing black, leather pants and knee-high boots of the same color. Their owner walked from behind the horse and revealed themselves to the three.

"My God," the woman shuddered, unable to believe that the man in front of them was one they knew to be old news. "This can't be."

The men looked at the guy and couldn't seem to take in other features beyond the right arm wearing a metallic, oversized, black and silver gauntlet.

"This mare belongs to me now," the mystery man told them, addressing the unicorn-like horse. "Kindly step aside…or know relentless fury."

"Know this," the woman responded, aiming at his chest, covered by a black and red coat that extended down to his upper pants. "I don't take any bull from a kid that disappeared almost a month ago after all the devastation he caused just to get back at his old man."

BANG, BANG, BANG! She fired at him, watched him stagger backwards, but he didn't fall, even though she had shot him in the chest.

"Oh?" The men behind her awed in fear.

"I really didn't want to do this today, even to get my horse," the guy told them, suddenly holding a large kama in his left hand, "but you've just sealed your fate, as the city needed to be emptied, anyway."

He then ran up to the woman, and severed her head off with such unnatural speed.

"Aaaahh!" The men screamed, as their co-worker's head fell to the ground.

"Hey, man!" The one that used to hold the kit that fell to his feet panicked. "The horse's yours! Take it! I want to live! I wanna live!"

"Me, too!" The other one panicked. "Me, too!"

"You have till the count of ten to get the Hell outta my sight," he told them. "One…"

They got the message and ran like Hell out of the stables while he finished strapping the saddle on the horse he'd been informed would be waiting for him here…and that he'd knew where to find her. Once the straps were all fastened, he climbed atop the horse, stroked the right side of her neck, and took hold of the straps and put his feet on the leg braces.

"Let's get outta here," he told her. "Yah!"

The horse neighed and galloped out of the place, past the two men and her new rider yelled out, "To the lost souls of the Earth, the Restorative is upon us!"

-x-

"…Hey, we got another Angel sighting!" Makoto Hyuga alerted the rest of the personnel in Central Dogma. "This Angel's in the States!"

"What's an Angel doing in the land of the free?" Aoba Shigeru wondered aloud.

"It's heading for what's left of…New York?" Hyuga revealed.

"But there's nothing there…except a bunch of people trying to rebuild the place."

But Misato, Ritsuko and Fuyutsuki were the only ones that could see some of the reason for this. Tokyo-3 was the first city…and New York's damaged Big Apple was the second city to be invaded by an Angel. Probably in the same fashion as the Third Angel.

-x-

People were screaming as the Angel made its presence known to the people that survived in New York. It looked like a giant, reddish squid without its tentacles, flying in the sky above the buildings that had been built years ago in the reconstruction program. As this creature soared through the maimed city that was trying to rebuild itself, atop one of the buildings still in the progress of being completed, a man atop a red horse looked down at the people running for their lives. A slight smile formed on his face as he viewed them as smart enough to consider leaving the city, but dumb to think the Angel was going to hurt them. Oh, no, that wasn't the task for the Angel. It was a task for him…if it became necessary for him to do so.

-x-

As he rode his mare atop a large hill, the rider saw from afar, elsewhere in the world, the second Angel that made its presence known as it stood upright beside one of the World Trade Center buildings and did nothing further than that. He had also seen, atop a work in-progress building, a man atop a red horse, looking like he'd seen better days. There was the likelihood that this place he'd never seen, this New York City, was that man's domain for the time being, just as Tokyo-3 was his own for the time being, based on the way he was informed. That meant that two cities were now incorporated into the grand design…with only six cities left to be made the preparation points by the Angels that would show themselves in due time.

_In due time,_ he thought, stopping at the top of the hill, looking at the city that was the first of the set to be prepared. _In due time._

-x-

"Yui Ikari," greeted the elderly man known as Lorenz Kiel to the young woman that created the science behind the Evangelions. "Welcome back."

While she was being led around the building in what was left of the town of Nagoya, her brother, Hei-Bai, was meeting with their ailing father, who looked worse than the previous time they met. The man, in his sixties, hooked to a machine to filter his blood for him, looked at him and greeted him with a small smile; it had been over a decade since they last met.

"Father," Hei-Bai spoke up.

"Hei-Bai," his father responded. "It's good to see you again. How was your stay in the States?"

"It was…good…until my girlfriend left me," he expressed, a little bitter.

"I am sorry to hear that."

"You have no idea how difficult it is, knowing that my past had a loose end I didn't know about…and that there were consequences that didn't need to occur that cost the lives of over two-hundred people. To think that one person, let alone a fourteen-year-old born to two maniacs, could take so many lives when all he wanted was to murder his father."

"That's the downside of ignorance, stupidity, or being hard at understanding to the consequences yet to unfold in front of you. I never got to know the twins, either, let alone the one that lived to be fourteen. Not because I'm dying, mind you, but because of that prick Yui married."

"You mean, that 'A'-hole didn't want anyone seeing Shinji while he was in the loony bin? Makes me a little…glad that he was murdered by someone that hated him."

"But to kill one that is hated…is to kill many that one hates…and then be hunted…just because you take lives, regardless of whether they were guilty or innocent."

"And the only pity of knowing that Shinji probably did many a great favor by eliminating Gendo…and that the people that didn't even know him…except for his crimes, cast him in darkness, even after he died, so that he's despised for years to come so long as people bring him up in pathetic conversations."

"Now that you've returned, what shall you do?"

"I have no intention of doing what you were forced to do by that woman, just so that you know. My major was in medicine, neurology in particular. I just wanted to help people that couldn't help themselves. Unlike some scientists, I got nothing to prove, no desire to make my mark in history or save the world or some nonsense like that."

"Heh-heh, I don't know what my friends in the States taught you, but I won't stand in your way. Just be careful on your way out. There is a room for you here until you're settled on your own terms."

"Thank you, Father."

The two men parted on good terms, and the younger man stepped out into the hall, just in time to see Yui walking his way. He gave her a slight frown and immediately turned away, leaving her to face their old man while he went to do something good with his life.

Yui had to suspect that, even though Hei-Bai and their father never conversed a lot (as far as she knew), they were still able to get along, unlike Shinji and everyone he came across, whom were either killed or left for dead. She then stepped into the room and met her father for the first time in over twelve years.

"Father?" She greeted.

-x-

"…This is the second Angel that has invaded a major city and done nothing other than making itself no different from a monument!" A military official expressed in a secret meeting.

"And like the first invader, it shows up, forces the people to flee, then just stands around somewhere and remains untouchable," a second official added.

"Now, New York City," a third official expressed concern, "has been under our Restoration Program ever since Two-Thousand-Four, and we were eight months left from completion until this happened."

"And as with the previous Angel, as some of the people are calling these monsters, it hasn't done anything to show hostility other than just being a thorn in our side and taking space, so the use of an N² weapon is outside probable cause in getting rid of it without taking the whole city with it."

"…So…so long as these Angels continue to do nothing other than take up space where they parked, showing no hostility, whatsoever, we, what, put up with them?" Another military official asked. "Why can't we just use the Evangelion that was sent to Japan to deal with it? Surely by now, they've found a way to deal with the Angel that took up residence in that city that was emptied long before it showed it up by that dead kid."

"No, after its initial encounter, they've done nothing to the Angel to risk provoking it."

"They're scared of it. Of course, I don't blame them for being such. The Angel was reported to have made a negative gesture telling them not to try anything. Since then, it's been standing around, like it's waiting for something. It's a stalemate, basically; NERV does nothing to the Angel…and the Angel does nothing to them in turn."

-x-

If the Fourth Angel was going to make a move on what was left of New Jersey after arriving in New York, it didn't give any indication of such a thought. At least, that's what most of the people that used to live in the most populated city in the United States wanted to believe. But so far, the Angel hadn't done anything after reaching the World Trade Center towers; it just stood there.

"When it is gonna do something?" A man asked to his fellow men.

"Yeah, we've been running here for hours after that thing showed up! We've been waiting all day!" A woman complained, and as the people complained about being forced out of their homes in the Big Apple, several news media outlets were at work reporting the crisis that was yet to come.

"…Since its arrival, it has remained beside the World Trade Center, completely immobile…"

"…The Restoration Program has had to postpone the completion of the city until the matter involving this creature has been resolved…"

"…All entrances and exits to and from New York have been closed down, isolating the city from the rest of the area, a no-go zone…"

"…Similar methods are being taken like those in Japan, making it difficult to determine when, and if ever possible, either city will be livable again…"

As the news people continued to blabber, some people, just faces in the crowds, with vacant or negative expressions, looked at the massive Angel and wondered how long until what they knew was going to happen happened. They were a patient bunch, but there was a limit to how long they wanted to wait.

-x-

Unfortunately, in all the mayhem of simply trying to get out of the city, there were those that were either unable to, or were unwilling to, like the street gangs that were running around, smashing into shops and taking whatever they wanted.

"Man, this is what I love about an empty city!" A man cheered, carrying a stack of Apple products. "No worries about money!"

"Yeah, boy!" One of his friends agreed, and they hopped into their car and rode off from the broken-into Apple Store.

Neigh! The sound of a horse neighing caught their attention, which seemed out of place.

"What the Hell was that?" One of the four men that robbed the store asked.

"It sounded like a horse," the second one responded.

"But…there aren't any horses left in New York," said the third guy.

Neigh! The neighing of the horse got louder and louder, until, on the road further down from their car, they saw the source of the neighing. It was a horse, going against the belief that there weren't any left around, but it wasn't one of those wild ones…and it certainly wasn't one owned by the police, either. It was a red horse, covered in rusted, cracked, old armor from head to tail, with glowing eyes that looked like fire contained in flesh, almost brutal in its appearance, and atop it was its rider, who brandished a large sword that burned like fire.

"Whoa!" The men gasped, stopping their car.

"What the fuck, man?!" The driver gasped.

"Leave the city now…and don't come back lest you value your life," the rider atop the horse demanded of them, sounding demonic and full of brutality.

"Run him over," the guy in the passenger seat told the driver. "Kill him."

"I will count to ten, and you had best run to the nearest bridge," the rider told them, his eyes flaring. "One…two…three…"

The car then burned the rubber of its tires and accelerated toward the horse and its rider, with its four passengers laughing like pricks without a care.

"She won't be pleased about this," the rider expressed, "but on the other hand, I get to do my job."

He raised his sword at the approaching car…and unleashed an inferno upon it. In five seconds, there was nothing left of the vehicle…except the scent of burnt flesh.

"Two cities down, and six more will follow," the rider expressed, and pulled the reins of his horse and ran down the street, his burning sword cooled down to reveal a battered blade of blue steel.

-x-

While awaiting further orders, the rider of the white, unicorn-like horse sat against a tree, looking up at the sky, being lazy as his horse ate the grass around it. He then brought up his right arm and looked at the gauntlet present, seeing the engraved marking on the backhand side of it, in the form of a sickle…and the letters on the wrist, making the name that he was now known by to those he would meet and those that would come to either fear or respect him…but not to the other guy that stayed with him. While the new name still took some getting used to, he became more accustomed to it by remembering the murders he committed back when he was who he still resembled; no matter how much he could've considered believing, he didn't truly live, and there was nothing that could be said to convince him that he did live, for he only had days where every hour was a battle just to see the next day and murder his priority target that aided in making his early years to his final days a Hell that had no escape.

"I can see how hard it is for you to become relaxed, even when you have nothing to do," he looked away from his gauntlet and to his left, seeing the spirit of his life and death companion. "I don't suppose you could try smiling just once, could you?"

_You know, it's not easy for me,_ he thought, knowing his companion could hear his thoughts, making speech unnecessary. _Maybe in another future._

"I hold you to it. I want to see you smile."

Then, with some effort, the rider's lips curled up and revealed his teeth.

The fellow spirit, if he had a face to demonstrate such emotions, found that while his twin was getting easier to be around, smiling was simply not one of the things he was good at. It had no doubt stemmed from the negatives of his upbringing, which left permanent damage that lingered in this state of purgatory until they received new life that cleansed them both of the darkness that their parents left. He found it to be a double pity that such things, such as their sins, don't stay buried, even after the loss of their flesh.

"At least you're trying," he told him, and his twin's attempt at smiling stopped.

"I think it's time we met the three altogether," the rider told his companion, getting up. "Alone, the each of us are able to cause problems to an extent, but altogether, we're a storm against oppressors and tyrants that stand in our way."

The spirit of the dead child disappeared as the rider got on his horse, making his presence known once more as the horseman that would decide the fate of many. His gauntlet read _Death_, and that was the end to all, living things.

A/N: Well, here's chapter two, and you see some of the next character that will be known. Until the next chapter. Peace!


	3. Meeting and Understanding

Creation began on 11-25-13

Creation ended on 11-28-13

Neon Genesis Evangelion

A New Cause: Meeting and Understanding

A/N: Know your enemy and ally.

She was running in the darkness. Yui couldn't understand why, but she was running in the darkness of an environment that looked like a city overtaken by a massive network of trees and vines, wearing the Plugsuit she had on during the Contact Experiment.

Neigh! She heard the sound of a horse nearby, and turned around to see what she could've been running from, and then wishing she hadn't turned to see at all. Neigh!

It wasn't the fact that it was a type of unicorn like the ones from mythology, or that it had eyes that looked like fire wrapped in bone-white flesh, but who was riding atop it. She never imagined seeing Shinji, looking as he did prior to his death, but without the blood and gore that covered him, wielding a sickle and frowning at her.

"Ha!" He howled, pulling the reins of his horse and approaching her.

"Oh!" She gasped and resumed her run.

Whatever the reason for this, Yui could only suspect that her son's ghost was remedying a factor he left undone in life and deciding to eliminate other loose ends, her in particular. As she ran down a narrower street that was occupied by a network of dead trees, the neighing of more than one horse could be heard, which made her know that there was more than one horse behind her. She wanted to turn and see who, other than Shinji, was chasing her, but she was afraid to. Who knew what was chasing her to the ends of this place?

It was a good thing she chose to keep running, for Shinji wasn't alone now. On his left was a man atop a red horse wrapped in ancient armor; he was wearing gray and red armor, looking just as ancient as the armor on his horse, and a helmet modeled after a demon's, with three horns and spikes on the top and sides, respectively. This man wielded a massive sword of fire as his weapon of choice, as though the time this man came from was a dark and violent point in the medieval ages.

On Shinji's right was a horse that looked whiter than his own, without the horn and with the same eyes of fire, and running as gracefully as any horse that came before it ever could. Atop it was a man dressed in white robes, a hood masking his face, wielding a large bow that looked like it was spawned from his right hand, armed with an arrow.

The fourth horsemen, on Shinji's far right, was atop a black horse, almost as thin as a skeleton, but still full of vitality in a weird way. The rider looked as young as Shinji did, but thinner than he did, just like his horse, dressed black clothing that looked like rags with stitches sewn into the sleeves and legs, wearing an oversized gauntlet on his right arm, like the ones on Shinji and the rider of the red horse, but with a different engraving. This boy looked like he belonged to a foreign country or culture that existed centuries ago before it went extinct.

When Yui reached a dead-end on the road, made possible by the dense thicket of trees that was in front of her, she turned to see them, and could've sworn this was something out of the themes of religion. Her son's ghost was atop a pale horse, wielding a sickle, the guy in white robes wielded a large bow atop his whiter horse, meaning the one Shinji was one had to be a pale horse, the rider of the red horse wielded a sword and the rider of the black horse was skinny like twigs. She knew the mythology of the Four Horsemen enough to know that they meant the end of the world. Based upon the sight of the pale horse, the Kama sickle gripped in her son's hand, and the other three men beside him, Yui saw that Shinji was the most feared member: Death incarnate.

"We," she heard him speak, his voice being louder and filled with a strength she hadn't seen in him when he was alive, "are the new way to the healing the world needs."

Then, she saw him hurl his sickle at her! The blade glistened in what little light there was in the darkness around it.

SLASH! The quickness of the slicing, the splattering of blood in the air, and the falling of a feminine form filled the ends of the night.

-x-

"…Aaaahh!" Yui gasped, awakening from her slumber at her desk, scattering several papers onto the floor. "…Aaah…aah… Oh…"

After agreeing to continue her work on the Evas for SEELE, she had gone on to perfect the power source behind the biomechanical behemoths, though the work behind their cores was still work in-progress, as it was not possible to create artificial souls just yet. But she still managed to find time to look at Shinji's drawings and doze off. Unfortunately, her dreams were nothing more than nightmares, and the latest one was more horrifying than the previous one. She thought it was a sign of Shinji coming after her…if he had truly come back from the dead, and to kill her.

Still, the drawing she got before she left the institution that he was in for most of his life, it has left her wondering when (and if) he would make the choice to come after her. He left her for dead when he was alive, and didn't even try to come after her after he had killed Gendo, instead just calling it quits after he considered his goal fulfilled. Whatever his reason for coming back now, she was sure it would involve her, one way or another.

"…Ikari?" She heard a man behind her at the entrance to her living quarters, turned to see a man in a black suit, holding a folded, black dress.

She sighed, having remembered that a week after meeting her father again for the first time in over ten years, he succumbed to his renal failure because he couldn't get a kidney off the donor registration system as a result of being the grandfather of a serial killer with a large body count. After the revelation of Shinji's escape from the NERV paramilitary organization, combined with every failed attempt to control or eliminate him, her father, Yuma Ikari, had to live with the unlikely possibility of living past sixty-seven years old, and died from his advanced stage of kidney cancer. Yui was also mildly devastated because they never reconciled, not after all that she did…and didn't do.

"How long?" She asked the man.

"Forty-five minutes," he answered her, handing the dress over to her. "Your brother is being escorted to the funeral already."

"Thank you."

After the man left her, she went to her bathroom to change.

-x-

"…Sometimes, I think you give them a little too much freedom," went a man toward a woman that was tending to flowers in a garden on an uncharted island that was miles away from any modern-day locale. "I mean, I trust in your decision to have them be the ones alongside myself to do what needs to be done, but I worry that they'll be…uncooperative in the long run, especially Death. He's likely the most unstable of us lost souls."

The woman, the very same that was encountered by the souls of Shinji and Mako, a mysterious individual that sought them out to do the world some real good, looked at the man that accompanied her from time to time, had just planted a new seed for a tree that wouldn't grow until years later, and rose to her feet.

"If we have no free will, no individual minds, no sense of identity, how can we cooperate with each other in our own time?" She asked him. "And to control any one of you…would be to play the role of a puppet master, which I can never be. I've no choice but to trust each of you, especially Death, and your individual judgment for the fate of the planet and the lives at stake. There's no form of coincidence, even casual coincidence. The Angels arriving and staying in the cities they are sent to, you all being brought together to aid in the cause, myself for wanting to undo the despair that was caused long ago…and made worse fifteen years ago. Call your current formation whatever you will: Destiny, fate, fortune, even. It was inevitable from the very beginning. Of course, anyone else could've taken your places…but would you want them to?"

"No," he told her. "I need to be the one that does what I do, and not just to keep others from suffering any more than they already have, even if I haven't made them suffer for whatever faults they might've done to me or to others just yet. There isn't a soul, in this life or the next, that can do what I can…or understand why I must do so."

The woman placed a comforting hand on his clothed shoulder and removed the hood that masked his face, revealing a scarred man's face with hazel eyes and gray skin. His expression seemed conflicted between anger and pained, with his left eye sporting a series of claw marks over his lids. He looked like he was in his early-thirties.

"You've been with me the longest, so whatever you do, I trust you to be whatever you have to in order to do, but know where your line is drawn, even when with the other three, and you will need them…just as they will need you, whether they know it or not." She told him, tracing over the claw marks on his eye, and she turned toward a cove carpeted with wildflowers. "They are coming. You should go introduce them to each other. All four of you need to be acquainted with one another, since you will be working together as much as you do separately. They've not met their newest member…and they need to know they're not alone in this cause."

The scarred man nodded and replaced his hood and walked over toward his horse, a beautiful stallion with the whitest fur and hair you ever saw before.

Rrugh! The horse whined a little as his owner climbed atop his back and grabbed the reins. Neigh!

He rode the stallion to a small cliff and waited for the others to arrive. From atop his horse, he could see a ball of fire approaching the cove and over the surface of the ocean water. He recognized the approaching presence of his fellow man he'd known for a long time.

As the fireball got closer, it took the shape of the red horse and its master, the knight that was from New York. They reached the shore and remained there. The knight got off his horse and shook off his soreness from the hour-long travel he took having to find this island.

"It's good to see you here, Knight of the Restorative," the white stallion's owner greeted the red horse's.

The knight looked up and responded, "Likewise…uh, oh, wait, I don't know what your Restorative nickname is. As far as I know, you don't have one, seeing as you like to cast aside the unnecessary."

"We've been around since before people decided to ravage their lands with bombs that made soil sterile and turn lives to memories," the white stallion's owner expressed. "Must we really speak of nicknames when we already know each other enough to know that they're unnecessary?"

"We cast aside our original names when we chose to be what we are today," the knight expressed, and then jumped up toward the cliff, landing beside the robed man. "Or have you forgotten that my original name, as far as I'm concerned with my life before this half-life state of purgatory, is only a memory that I'd rather not have remembered, since my past ended on a violent note."

"Yet, you're the only one I know that's held onto his position for as long as I've held onto mine. I doubt that anyone could be anything like us. Conquest and War."

"Conquest, the Poison Master, and War, the Violent One."

BOOM! Something large and fast burst from the water and hovered in the air above their heads. It looked like it belonged in the water, but its color was too dark to tell.

SLAM! It fell to the ground beside them on the cliff, resembling a large, turtle-like serpent creature from the deep sea, with red eyes and large fins and flippers for limbs.

"Grrrruargh!" It growled, just before a dark smokescreen surrounded its form.

When it ceased, the creature had disappeared, replaced by a thin, black horse…and a young man dressed in rags that looked stitched up over time, with a large gauntlet on his right arm.

"Am I late?" The boy asked them.

War seemed confused by this boy's question, since he had never met this kid before, so he didn't know how to answer him.

"No, Famine," went Conquest, answering him. "No one's late…nor are they early. They arrive, precisely, when they intend to make their presence known."

"Famine? He's Famine?" War questioned, viewing this as an informal introduction. "So, there was one with that name and designation, and I didn't know?"

"There's a new Death, as well," Conquest explained further, "meaning that the four of us have been brought back together for the first time in too long a time."

"And where is he?" Famine asked.

"He should be around shortly," Conquest answered.

"I'm already here," went a new voice to the three, and they looked beside Famine's horse, seeing the white horse that resembled a unicorn…and its rider, accompanied by a see-through, floating infant.

"Okay, that's creepy, even for me," War expressed; normally, they'd each be able to sense the presence of one of their own, but this guy gave no warning until after he spoke up. "Is he him, Conquest?"

"Yeah, he's the new Death of the Restorative," the robed man introduced the former Shinji Ikari, who then got off his horse. "How long did it take you to find us here?"

"I just let my horse lead the way," Death answered him, softly petting the head of his mode of transportation without looking at her. "So, who's who?"

"In the same order of which the horsemen we get our names from, but not associated to causing the end of the world and such, I am Conquest, the Poison Master," Conquest introduced himself, and then pointed to War, "and this is War, the Violent One."

"Violent, not a tyrant, even though I probably should be," War expressed, making sure Death understood it right."

"Famine, the Great Hunger, also known as the Starvation," Conquest continued, introducing the boy that seemed to be Death's age at the time of death.

"Nice to meet you," Famine told Death.

"And you yourself, Death of the Restorative, are Death, the Endgame," Conquest identified Death himself. "It looks like we're a fitting quartet."

"Conquest, War, Famine, and Death," Death made sure he knew who was who, pointing to the robed man, the knight and the boy in rags, respectively before pointing to himself.

"The Four Horsemen of the Restorative," went Mako, addressing the four by a different identity. "Four lost souls tasked with saving the world instead of destroying it, something the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse would do for their masters."

Death then raised up his right arm, revealing his identity on his gauntlet.

"Then, it looks like we will be working together," Death told them.

Famine then raised up his right arm, revealing his own gauntlet, with his name engraved upon it.

"I didn't accept this state of purgatory for the world to suffer more than it already has," Famine expressed, "even if it does before we can heal it."

Then War and Conquest did the same with their right arms, revealing their status as members of the Four Horsemen of the Restorative.

FLASH! Each member saw a scene that was to come to pass: A giant of a diamond-like creature appearing in a city that wasn't one of the major ones, but carried a feature that made it stand out from the previous cities. There was some sort of structure shaped like…an incomplete circle coming out of the ground, forming a sort of gateway.

When the vision ceased, all eyes were on Famine, as though it was his turn to do something.

"War made sure New York was cleared out," Conquest expressed, "and Death had emptied out Tokyo-3 before he became Death. I got the city after yours, Famine."

"We should be drawing straws for something like this," Famine complained, and climbed atop his horse. "I mean, I don't fill out as much as you guys do."

"Do you even know know how to fill out?" War asked him.

"Easy, War," Conquest warned him. "He might not look it, but even Famine can be dangerous to people that pose a threat."

Famine's horse then turned back into the creature it had been prior to arriving on the island, and jumped into the water.

"I'll accompany him," Conquest sighed, "just in case he needs assistance."

As he got on his horse, Death and his twin looked at War, though Death was the only one capable of giving facial expressions that demonstrated some sort of dislike.

"What?" War asked.

"That was unnecessary," Death told him. "What you said to Famine. So…you should consider yourself lucky that you're a horseman and not a mortal."

The teenaged twin then walked away, leaving the knight with the infant twin.

"He's right," Mako told him. "You shouldn't underestimate a person…nor should you overestimate a person just because they don't seem like a threat to you or some other person or group. My brother encountered a similar situation when he was alive. Our cold tyrant of a father from that live thought my brother wasn't capable of such murder, and found himself facing a person he never thought would be able to cause him trouble the size of the city he died in."

"Your brother's a legend in my perception; what he did in ten days' time, it took me years to do in my previous life before this one as a horseman… Back then, being able to live up to my family's expectations was all that mattered to me…until my own mother caused my own demise."

"Are all the horsemen victims of family-related sins?"

"I wouldn't know. Not every horseman speaks of their past. I'm not the first horseman to be War. I'm the tenth incarnation of War. With each succeeding member of each horseman designation, comes the formation of a different gathering of the Four Horsemen of the Restorative. Even one or two horsemen changing out of the quartet means a different group altogether."

The infant nodded in acceptance and then disappeared. After which, Death, feeling that he needed no further reason to stay after meeting the other three horsemen, took his horse and ran off.

-x-

People ran in the dead of the night as the newest Angel appeared in St. Louis, Missouri of the United States. Nobody ever expected a city not so dense in population to be invaded by a massive, diamond-like creature that made a noise like a chorus on massive megaphones. And as it floated above the tallest buildings, atop the Gateway Arch, Famine, eating a burrito stuffed with everything a burrito has in it, watched as the smart people were leaving and would know safety, leaving only the fools that chose to stay behind for him to deal with.

Neigh! His horse neighed, and he gave the rest of his burrito to it.

"I guess while we're here, we should eat all that we can, while we can," he decided, and saw some fires breaking out within the city as Ramiel positioned himself where he felt he needed to be and wait for everything else to fall into place.

The Angel's chorus-like vocalization felt like a song of salvation at the end of the world.

A/N: Here's the third chapter until after Thanksgiving. Please, review it and tell me what you think. If it's too short, I apologize, I just wanted to get it out there. Peace out!


	4. She understands Death's pain

Creation began on 11-28-13

Creation ended on 12-10-13

Neon Genesis Evangelion

A New Cause: She understands Death's pain

The funeral had been small, comprised of only what was left of his family and some of his friends that were still alive. After Second Impact, Yuma had lost his wife to violence and most of his best friends to the disasters that were the result of people he wanted nothing to do with because of Yui's transgressions and the people she worked for. There had to be at least twenty people, and only eight of them were associated to the dead man.

Yui looked to her brother, who was one of only four people that brought bouquets for the grave; he ignored her like she wasn't there, which she probably should've been. Her absence from the physical plane was no different from faking one's death, and she did it by letting herself be consumed by Unit-01, formerly known as Unit-00 back then; she had found out that the identity change was made not long after the Contact Experiment due to the Eva being a test at seeing if one could be made from the flesh of Lilith, since their samples of Adam were either cloned or limited and took time and money to replicate, whereas Lilith's flesh was available and could be used in abundance so long as Lilith could regenerate the lost or damaged tissues.

The preacher's words gave no comfort. Not that anyone's words could when attending such events.

-x-

Asuka found it somewhat pathetic that there was hardly a soul that made its presence known in Tokyo-3. She saw no gossipers, no children running around, not even boys that she wouldn't mind ogling at her if it made her more noticeable. No, the city was truly a ghost town after the Third Child showed up and made a mess of things. Then, she heard a recent rumor…that his ghost came back to cause more trouble. Of course, she didn't believe that for a second, since there was no proof that he was still around; all she really heard was that after the autopsy, the boy was cremated and cast aside somewhere, since he made the medical examiners uneasy.

Though, due to the Geo-Front's power needs, electricity still coursed through the city, which allowed the street signs to work, the cameras that were available to observe people, and the televisions of a nearby electronics store to show news elsewhere around the world.

"…And it's been a week since New York City and St. Louis were invaded by giant monsters that have done nothing more than take up space," a woman said on the flat-screen televisions in front of Asuka. "From the pictures taken, you could almost mistake these things as giant, surrealistic balloons or statues, but people that used to live in these cities believe these creatures to be related to the one that's standing around in Tokyo-3, the city remembered mostly for being the hunting and death grounds of Shinji Ikari."

"Now, could I stop you for a moment?" A man asked, appearing beside the woman. "This is what has me ticked a little: People speak of monsters every now and then, like it's common practice or something, but when anyone speaks of Tokyo-3, the so-called fortress city of Japan, supposedly meant to help rebuild society, all it's really known for is that one kid with a twisted childhood and terrible disposition showed up because his father ordered him removed from a mental institution…and then he got loose and started killing people, and it didn't stop until he murdered his father…and by that time, he had murdered over three-hundred people, including the majority of the city's police force and over a dozen workers at Japan's NERV branch where his father resided."

"And you're saying?" The woman questioned.

"I'm saying that, even though these other cities are getting invaded by giant monsters all of the sudden, people are still more affected by what happened in Tokyo-3 than everything else that's happened," the man explained. "The people are still talking about him, still gossiping, constantly looking behind their backs, like he's still out there, on a rampage, killing anyone that he comes across. Some of the people are even starting to consider that he's not done with murdering people, and these giants are some sort of group he's become affiliated with. Even in death, he's still a curse that haunts people."

Then, several of the other flat-screen televisions showed various people's faces.

"…I never wanted to use the words 'conspiracy', 'neglect' or 'manipulation'," a male cop uttered out, "but after escaping that night he showed up at the police station and murdered everyone he came across, wanting to replenish his arsenal for when he decided to go after his father, it all started to sound like those words. Like people had conspired to neglect and manipulate this guy for reasons unknown."

"I consider myself one of the lucky few," a woman holding an infant close to herself said in front of the camera. "I got out of Tokyo-3 as soon as I heard he was being released from the nuthouse he'd been living in for as long a time he'd been alive."

"Tokyo-3 used to be such a quiet place to live in," said another woman, "without so much as a large death toll…until he showed up and changed everything! Now, I don't want to take my family back there, not even to resume school."

"…I've heard the gossip about his family," went another man, "about how his father killed his mother in a science experiment, and then we come to find that she's been alive all this time, hiding in the darkness, leaving her child alone to suffer. Both his parents were lunatics. We're talking just a pair of egomaniacs. And the relatives he was left in the care of tortured him with their opinions and dislike of him, simply because of who they were. I can't imagine how he was able to put up with them for as long as he could until he decided to kill them."

But one face stood out from the rest that Asuka noticed. It was that woman she'd seen recently, one of the few that returned to NERV after Shinji died, with her boyish looks and short hair; she could almost pass for a boy because of her height and face.

"…Everyone says such awful things about him," Maya Ibuki expressed, "but…even though it's just my opinion, and some people are bound to not agree with it, there's something that no one really seems to understand, that they don't take into consideration. I mean, people thought he was some sort of monster for doing what he did to all those people he killed…but…we can't forget, deny the unchangeable truth that…he was just a boy that everyone that didn't know personally…and disregarded entirely."

Unfortunately, Asuka couldn't agree with what Ms. Ibuki revealed of her opinion. She had never met the boy, but wouldn't have minded showing him a thing or two if she had met him. When she heard about NERV trying to recruit Shinji into working for them, she thought they were crazy to do so. There was no need to recruit another pilot, especially a boy, since she was superior; she was trained to pilot the Eva ever since she can remember, and she didn't develop any psychotic tendencies. Although she despised him before she even saw his face, she thanked him for eliminating Rei Ayanami, the First Child; the less competition she had to prove her worth, the better.

-x-

"…I hated what they did to his grave marker," Hei-Bai told Yui, standing in front of the tombstone of Shinji, which had been vandalized in the vast, memorial cemetery for those whose lives were lost because of Second Impact. "It's bad enough I never got to know either of them, but this is worse than what people have been saying about him."

Like all the other tombstones, Shinji's was as black as obsidian, shaped like a small pillar with a half-circle top, but had been disfigured with green and red spray paint to make it read out, _"Burn in Hell, Shinji Ikari" _so you couldn't see his DOB or DOD. No doubt some people that lived in the city he made a ghost town did this as an attempt to get back at him, even though he was dead and wouldn't care about them any less than he had before.

"Makes you feel bad, doesn't it?" Hei-Bai asked his sister. "It makes you feel bad that you still have your life and your son that didn't get killed by your husband lived to only be fourteen, and hated you?"

Yui kept her head turned away; it wasn't out of disrespect, but out of the fact that every time she saw the grave marker, she thought of Shinji in both her recent nightmare with him as one of the horsemen…and when he was alive for that final day, covered in blood and armed with guns, completely different from the little boy she left behind to ensure a bright future for all of mankind. And his only words to her were filled with hate, like there was nothing either of them or anyone could've done that could've brought them back together, not after the years of loneliness and hurt.

Hei-Bai placed a single rose with white petals in front of the grave, and then bowed his head.

As they turned to leave, from a large distance, so far that no one could've noticed anything, a pale horse with a horn on its head, standing around and doing nothing, while a young man approached the tombstone that was just visited, and stared down at it.

"Heh," he expressed, "I can't burn in Hell. But I can bring Hell to those that get in the way."

He touched the grave marker and then, as if responding to an impulse of rage, the tombstone cracked and shattered into a jigsaw puzzle. If anything, this was just to remove any traces of who he used to be when he was alive. His death had done more to him than just releasing him from burden he'd been forced to carry by his former parents; as he was transitioned from death to purgatory alongside his twin, he'd seen and heard secrets that made his desire for a new life free from the stain of the one that brought him no happiness all the more sought after. But one thing he couldn't shake off from when he was alive…was that dream or vision he had of the little girl that smiled at him, and had the round tummy. His death showed more of what had happened in some other life that was never lived by him to explain the girl in further detail: In at least some other plane of existence, he had known this child that seemed to care so greatly about him…or the him that was involved in her. And yet, as much as he found the girl to be somewhat of a beacon of sorts to his mind…he didn't know who she was.

"It bugs you, not knowing who this girl is that you've been seeing in your dreams and visions, doesn't it, brother?" Death turned to face the see-through spirit of his brother floating around behind him.

"You wouldn't happen to know who she is, do you, Mako?" He asked him.

"Gomen nasai, Death, but I don't," he apologized to him; he could've addressed the horseman by his former name, but chose not to on account of Death wanting to be as far removed from their dark past as possible. "Maybe Mother Gaia knows who she is. We will be seeing her again later."

"Just need to do one other thing before we do," Death informed him, and then returned to his horse, leaving the shattered tombstone…and a flower deprived of life, its petals crunched up and looking like the color of a leaf in the fall.

Mako noticed the rose and felt a degree of sadness from it. As much he longed for a new life like his brother did, the fact that the tiniest of things that cling to life still suffered, no matter how hard you tried to protect them. He considered himself an example of tiny lives that were unprotected; he died as an infant, dropped by his former father, and, although labeled as an accident, he couldn't change that.

"Mako?" Death called out, catching his twin's attention.

"Coming," he responded, and disappeared.

Death then climbed atop his horse and rode off through the forest of tombstones.

-x-

When the former citizens of St. Louis came to the conclusion (and acceptance) that the minimum safe distance of which this boy riding a black horse that caused unnatural consequences to any that stood between him and clearing out the city of human life was eighty yards on all sides, all they could do as they took shelter in the neighboring cities and towns around their beloved home was watch as the large, monolithic creature that made chorus-like noises as it floated in the center of their tallest buildings. And as Ramiel, the Angel of Thunder maintained his position within the city, the Black Rider, Famine, continued to make periodic checks around the streets to ensure that they were deprived of men, women and children that didn't leave, and give them one of two choices: Leave or suffer the consequences. He had just finished eating out a neighborhood deli shop to replenish his and his horse's energy reserves. Or, rather, supplying the both of them with new energy; of all the horsemen, he had the shortest straw of the quartet, and that was something he was trying to remedy as quickly as possible.

Neigh! His horse neighed, detecting a presence within the city.

"If it's another prostitute, it'll be the seventeenth one since I had to ensure that the city stays deprived of human life," he expressed, and followed the aura of sin and virtue that existed within people. "Abashed, the Devil stood, and felt how awful goodness is. How awful goodness is…in the wide womb of uncreated night."

In two minutes, he found the source of the presence that no longer belonged in the city, and was disappointed to find that it was another prostitute. A woman, or a girl, actually. She couldn't have been more than…his own age in appearance, dressed in a green miniskirt, a blue cut-off shirt and a white jacket, with short, blond hair and brown eyes.

"Okay, I gotta ask you a question of personal interest before I give you the life-altering question I've given several people since I got here," he spoke to the girl. "Just how old are you?"

"I'm as young as you want me to be," the girl told him.

"Mother Gaia, help me," he sighed to himself. "Miss, I'm going to have to ask you to leave this city, as it's a no-go zone for people right now until further notice. Otherwise, I'm going to have to sentence you to a fate you can't walk away from."

"You must be crazy if you think I'll listen to you," the girl told him, sounding not so sweet like she did a moment ago. "Though, if you're looking for a moment of fun, I'm your lady."

Famine's face frowned, showing the girl that he wasn't looking for what she was offering. He wasn't interested in relationships back when he was alive, and he wasn't interested in sexual favors in his purgatory. No, for him, it was just this cause…and the reward for his services when it was all over.

"Please," he tried to be merciful to the girl, saving his violence as an absolute last resort for when nothing else worked out. "Don't make me decide the darkest of fates for you. Leave and live…or stay and die. Make the right choice, the smart choice."

"Make me," she responded, and Famine sighed in defeat, as he climbed off his horse and approached her. "Yeah, come over here and make me leave."

He stopped in front of her and raised his arms up…and then grabbed her face and right arm.

"Aaaurgh!" He growled, performing his darker duties as a Horseman of the Restorative. "Aaaaurgh!"

The girl tried to resist, but felt weak all of the sudden, and saw her left arm, to her great horror, shriveling up to nothing but the bone underneath the skin. Then, she felt her lights dimming to nothing but the darkness that awaited her. In less then a minute, Famine had reduced the young prostitute to a shriveled-up corpse that looked like all of its fluids had been sucked out and the skin became dry and rough like a dead leaf. Unlike his namesake, but with a few signs of such, Famine possessed the ability to cause fatigue, hunger and weakness in whoever he touched, and, when pushed to extremes, could take such things to fatal levels by sucking out the life energy in his victims, taking all of that life energy for himself to use.

"I hope you can understand now that this is something I have to do to those that don't get the message," he told the corpse. "I do this not because I've suffered like so many others, but because there's no one else more qualified than thee to aid in this great cause to undo all existing pain. But fear the darkness for a short time. All the souls sent away shall be restored once all is made right with the world."

He returned to his horse and rode off. Sometimes, he felt the worst part of his duty as a horseman was the fact that he had to harm the people that decided to stay in the cities invaded by the Angels, being foolish in their choice instead of just leaving. And yet, it was the fate they chose, and the fate he dealt them with for staying. Maybe the other horsemen were comfortable in their positions, but he was often left wondering if he could stomach the form of violence he was capable of unleashing in his.

-x-

His horse never seemed to know fatigue, as it never slowed down as he rode it around the city. But Death was pleased to see that the Third Angel was untouched since it arrived in Tokyo-3; there were a few birds atop its shoulders, but no serious harm had been done to it, whatsoever. But as he saw the face of this Angel, he felt like he had seen it before, yet this was his first encounter with the being of divine might brought to Earth. He could see himself in one instant facing the Angel, and in another, the girl that seemed to haunt his thoughts, facing the Angel for him. Lately, there was something wrong with the way he perceived the world because of his thoughts on this girl he had never truly seen.

_She smiled at me,_ he thought, walking his horse down the same street he walked through when he escaped from NERV, seeing that nothing had changed from that night he tasted freedom from the walls and boundaries surrounding him. _Who was she? Why did she really care?_

He walked past the glass wall of the store he broke into in order to gather things with which to change his appearance and hold his guns when he had them. Going further down, he stopped in front of an electronics store, showing several television sets, all showing his face, both in his childhood and during his time in the institution and after he died. His eyes widened from the revelation that people seemed to be talking about him. They were saying things about him, still full of harshness and contempt; their words breaking through his walls of bone and decay. His eyes narrowed away from the TVs and toward newspaper vending machines, with his face plastered over them!

They were speaking of him, of his evasion of the law, his murders, his crimes. Not his pain, his loneliness, his being manipulated by the people that should've cared about him, that shouldn't have lied to him, leave him alone, left him to suffer every waking moment of being hated, hurt and abandoned by the rest of society. No, for who he was back then, he was labeled a villain, never a victim.

SMASH! He ripped the vendors off their hinges and threw them into the street.

SHATTER! He punched the glass displaying the TVs and threw them allover, venting his anger.

Neigh. His horse whined, watching him cause damage. Neigh.

"Grrurgh! Aaaurgh!" He grunted, breaking the TVs, shattering the vendors, even knocking over a streetlight by staggering against it.

-x-

"…Oh, my God," went Hyuga, who was detecting a disturbance in the city above the Geo-Front on his monitor. "Captain Katsuragi, you're not gonna believe this!"

Misato, who was nearby in the core of Central Dogma, walked up to behind the lieutenant and saw what was on his monitor.

"It's just a guy breaking things," she tried to disregard this.

"But look at who it is," he responded, and had the camera he was watching this scene of minor devastation. "What are the chances of anyone looking exactly like the kid that everyone believes to be long gone after the murders he committed?"

When she saw the boy's face showed up on the monitor, all the color drained from her face; she never expected to see him alive. She saw him draw his final breath, heard him saw his final words after he had felt freed from the pain he had for years due to what his parents had done to him, to instigate his maddening cause. There was no way this was some sort of copycat or imposter; the resemblance was too uncanny, too extreme. This kid had to be Shinji…or a shade of him, like a ghost unable to find rest.

"Where is he right now?" She questioned Hyuga.

When he gave her the location, she ran right out. She had to see for herself if this kid was who she believed he was. And if she was right, then she had to know something: Why he came back.

-x-

When Death was done trashing the street, his brother appeared and saw the damage he had done…and the hateful expression on his face.

Death looked up at Mako and sighed.

"Do you feel any better now?" Mako asked him.

"Yeah," he answered back. "They're talking about me. They're constantly talking about me."

"They're talking about who you were, not who you are. There's a difference between who a person is…and who a person was. We were Mako and Shinji Ikari before fate stopped our hearts. They're past tense, and Mako's only remembered for being a baby accidentally murdered by a megalomaniac who wouldn't so much as try and hold his surviving son that made it to fourteen, while Shinji's remembered only for murder. They're immortalized by the people that won't let them go."

"We still look the way we did when we died, brother," Death retorted, though the infant was unfazed by the harshness of his twin's words; he knew he was just trying to state the facts of their undead status.

"You still call me Mako. Just Mako, not Mako Ikari, just as I know you, not as Shinji Ikari, but as Shinji…but you're also Death of the Restorative, the Horseman of Death, a reaper of souls that deserve what they get from you if they don't get out of the way. None of that means you have to be what the people affected by your past misdeeds label you as, any more than I have to be remembered as another dead baby."

Death sat on one of the destroyed vendors and looked at the ground. In the semblance of eternity they spent in the dark after he died, he couldn't believe how educated his twin had become during his time in the paradise above mortality.

"You sure you don't regret throwing away your place in Heaven to be with me?" He asked him.

"If I had to do my previous life allover again, up to my death and entrance to Heaven, I'd give it up again to be with you. Brothers in life, brothers in death, bound by a thread stronger than any other bond understandable or acceptable by the rest of any society. There's no good twin/evil twin scenario, no bad brothers, no 'save one, let the other die'. If there truly was, then it's all bull. And what those childless nuts were trying to achieve by exploiting you was also bull. Do you think any mortal, from those with wealth and advantages to those born with little to nothing, should try and defy an ancient truth that a force above all of us, a force some people call God, or all the gods from different cultures, different beliefs, is infallible? To make a mockery of the ageless belief that people can become better than the deities that gave them this world that they're killing with their pollution, their biological warfare, their sick cruelty toward people that did them no wrong?"

"I think…that if I am Death of the Restorative, and, like the Horseman of the Apocalypse that goes by the same designation, Hell is supposed to follow close behind me, then in the absence of Heaven, Hell will aid in saving the world, as opposed to ending it. And people will be taught a grand lesson on doing things that were better left undone."

Mako's exposed right arm rose up and he said, "You would unleash Hell only to punish the guilty, which is those that stand between saving the planet and killing its immortal soul? Not for the obtaining of wealth, not to scare people with the inevitable end to their existence should they continue to interfere…but to ensure that people see the error of their ways and repent, atone or suffer for crimes against everyone, including the souls taken generations before the ones that gave…and stole…our lives before they could even be lived?"

Death raised a finger from his right arm and gave it to his brother.

"Nobody is innocent, not even the innocent, and everyone is guilty, including the guilty," he said to him. "Heaven won't take the guilty…but there's plenty of room in Hell for those that have lost their innocence, something that isn't easily regained. Let the guilty be punished…and the innocent be permitted to see the return of the lives taken."

When large finger connected with small hand, their pact was sealed. This made Mako convinced even further that, unlike what so many people that lived through the horror his brother had wrought in his final days, his twin was merciful to the point that he could be considered kind and gentle if people gave him a chance…if they had actually tried to help him instead of condemn him. In fact, before he transitioned into the darkness with his brother, he saw a glimpse of some other life his twin had. It was only for a moment, probably a twenty-second glimpse before he ended up in the darkness, but it was long enough for him to see that Death, in that one life, was a happy child, mainly because he was surrounded by a group of people that, from his perception, didn't seem like they belonged together, but might as well have belonged together because they got along well, and that little girl that haunted his mind was with him…holding his hand so tightly and kindly that it was like she didn't want to let go.

If only Death was able to feel some measure of hope, of kindness that could make him smile.

Neigh! The horse whined, and they heard the sound of an engine running.

"Someone, a familiar mortal, is approaching," Mako told Death.

"There shouldn't be anyone in this city," he responded.

"Unless there are people here…but living in that Geo-Front. You remember what Conquest said about the Angels showing up in the cities chosen, that it's only the cities invaded, and that other places wouldn't be attacked. Sachiel hasn't attacked anyone or made an attempt to go down to where we found each other for the first and only time. And there are bound to be ways to get to and from the Geo-Front that don't direct entrance to this city that's your duty to ensure it stays empty of people."

"Still, I need to make sure that this pathetic place has no people left in it, and that means they'll either leave of their own volition…or they don't leave alive."

Mako then disappeared, just as a blue car showed up around a corner.

Shinji recognized the car, for he shot at it once he stepped out of the police station after replenishing his arsenal with more guns, but it got away from him. It stopped in front of him and a woman stepped out, one he also recognized. He was sure there was no other woman in the world with purple hair, and if he recalled it correctly, the woman's name was Katsuragi.

-x-

She couldn't believe it! There was no way this was possible, but he was right in front of her. Misato never thought she'd see Shinji among the living, but he looked different, and it wasn't just his change in clothing. It was like he'd been charged with a new mission…or he had unfinished business in the city. And the sight of the horse that looked like a unicorn proved that he had killed a woman that shot at him prior to getting away with it.

"Shinji?" She questioned him, and saw his face show anger.

"My name is Death," he told her. "Death of the Restorative, and you don't belong here. This city, however wretched it is, is under my protection…along with the Angel."

"The Angel? You…you're working with the Angels?" She questioned. "You're one of them, aren't you? You're some sort of Angel sent back to destroy mankind."

Death's gauntlet released his sickle with its blade smoldering hot.

"I am not an Angel," he uttered, "and I am not here to destroy mankind, even if it's still full of people that condemned me. Leave this city now, or you will be made to leave it."

Having just recovered full use of her arm, Misato took out her gun and aimed it at him in defense. It was bad enough he seemed able to speak more openly than he wasn't until he was dying in his final moments, but him threatening her life was enough to convince her that he was crazy like everyone said he was…even though he seemed very sane in his reasons for wanting revenge back then.

"Don't make me shoot you, Ikari," she threatened.

"It's not Ikari," he reaffirmed his designation. "My name is Death. I don't answer to the name that used to be deadweight…and will always be deadweight. I will not be persuaded to back down by you, and that gun won't change a thing. You can't kill me. It's been tried once before already."

"Don't tempt me to try. You make a move, and you're dead."

"Well, then, I say that I'm dead…and I move."

He approached her, and she fired at his head.

BANG! The bullet struck him right in his face, and he staggered backwards for a moment before he regained his stability…and looked at her like the shot never occurred.

"What in the name of…" She couldn't believe it; the sight of him unharmed seemed like an illusion.

Then, Death, perhaps to show that her attempt was futile, spat the bullet she used on him onto the ground, covered in blood and saliva.

"Just so you know," he spoke up again, "that did hurt, just like everything else I went through on the way to killing that bastard hurt."

And then he got up close, like lightning, and slashed her gun in half!

"Aaahh!" She gasped, and was then headbutted by Death and knocked to the ground. "Urgh!"

RING! The blade of his sickle was inches away from her neck, but close enough to show that if she made a move, her escape attempt would be short-lived. Her eyes meeting his, and seeing only a speck of mercy, almost like there had been when he was alive.

"Even though it was only because that bastard made it so, it was still you that got me out of that institute," he told her, which made her remember that day they met. "There was never anything worth speaking of, but I did appreciate being taken out of that pit after crawling over the sharp stones and being shoved into the mud by twisted authorities of stability and torture. You helped make it possible for me to put into motion my revenge, even though I never truly lived, even in my final moments, just existing in every waking moment of the worst form of existence I knew of. You got for me my freedom in my final days…so in return, I'll let you have your freedom to keep your days of existence a while longer. I want you to spread the word to those that don't know. The Angels are off-limits, each of the eight cities they come to is no man's land, a no-go zone for people. Anyone left within any of them will be at the mercy of the horsemen that protect the Angels from massive harm…and ensure the cities remain deprived of human life, with the choice being that you either leave of your own volition…or suffer your final breath. If people live down in the Geo-Front, but have ways of getting to and from it without being in this city will be spared, as the world beneath it is not part of the city. You don't bother the Angels, disobey the horsemen, or interfere with their shared cause…and they won't come for any of you with the intent to cause you trouble that will lead to what I can do. You tell them I said all of that…and don't let me catch you or anyone else in this city again."

He removed the blade from her neck and got up off her.

"And I don't wanna hear people talking about who I used to be, ever again," she heard him add as she got up and saw him get atop his horse. "I am not Shinji Ikari, anymore. I am Death. Death of the Restorative, and like the horseman I am named after, Hell follows behind me…and I can unleash it if I so choose to. Ya!"

NEIGH! His horse neighed as it rode off, disappearing behind a corner. NEIGH!

With that, Misato ran to her car and drove off the opposite way.

-x-

Like anyone with a green thumb, the woman that brought the Four Horsemen of the Restorative together was sitting within a lush garden on the island, surrounded by various, mammalian animals that barely reached the size of beach ball and colorful butterflies, as though she were a spring maiden of some kind, since the island itself looked like a perpetual piece of paradise. Everything around her was beautiful, pain that people inflict upon each other for all the wrong reasons seemed nonexistent here, and there wasn't a soul present that desired more than what they needed out of life. She smelled the scent of a nearby rose and sighed peacefully, though a tear fell from her left eye.

Neigh! She turned to her right, toward a series of trees where fog resided, and saw the pale, unicorn-like mare that belonged to Death emerge, with her rider atop her back.

Death stopped beside a small fence and got off onto the grass. He slowly crossed the fence that separated the garden from the woods his horse emerged from, and stopped four feet from the woman. He had never seen her looking almost saddened about something.

"Why do you seem miserable…Mother Gaia?" He asked her, addressing her by her name.

"Just a memory that hurts because of its meaning to me," she answered. "My daughter loved the scent of roses."

"Your daughter?"

"If she were here, she'd a bit older than you were when you were alive. About twenty-four years old."

Death then sat down in front of her and gestured for her to continue; his speech was still impaired, so he lacked most words that other people were capable of using under specific emotions…as his were still those of pain, anger and retribution, making it difficult to use words.

"I was among people again for a new century, a virtual nonentity, just enjoying the life I had until the century ended and the next one started. I was drawn to Japan to see how the people there had progressed in their development, both spiritual, emotional, physical and technological. I was disappointed in their fading from their spiritual roots, with their emotional ones following suit, and their technical development was a saddening sight, for it seemed that everyone was into violence. The only physical development they had that was good was their architectural achievements. It was the Zen architecture they were improving upon. There was just something about it that showed people's spiritual and emotional development; they put their hope into something old and making it new. I was on my way to a rock garden…when I stumbled upon my daughter."

This then made Death realize, just as Mako manifested beside him, that Mother Gaia didn't have her child in the common sense that both brothers could understand with certainty. No, Mother Gaia was like the women of the past and present that acted as surrogates to those that lost their mothers, yet it was also likely that, long ago, she did have children of her own.

"She was trying to steal my lunch from my bag, and I sat her down and shared my lunch with her," she resumed. "I asked her what her name was, and she said she couldn't remember it; I had made it a point to be able to tell whenever a person is lying to me…and her words were honest. I took her to a doctor and had her examined, and they explained she suffered from memory impairment; she couldn't remember an incident she was in that caused her memory loss or anything of her life before we met. She couldn't even remember her name. Nobody reported a missing girl or anything tragic that happened recently, and nobody claimed her. She was a living ghost, a phantom with no ties, so I took her under my wing. I decided to call her Kyuukai (Long-cherished hope), but her nickname was Zen, like the rock garden I had lunch with her in. I loved her like she was my own, and I wouldn't deny it. We got along like best friends, and, like my children from the past generations, I would've done anything for her to have a happy life."

"What happened to her?" Death asked.

"We were vacationing on one of the smaller islands in Japan…just to get away from the subtle madness she found herself in with me when she found out I was, literally, no different from Mother Nature or any other personified entity. She didn't resent me for my existence or anything, even thought I was some sort of hero to lost souls that wanted to live again in a restored world, and then…the island had been submerged by giant waves. Over eight-hundred people either drowned or was buried under fallen buildings. I survived only because I was the embodiment of the planet, now wracked with intense pain because of what Second Impact did, but my daughter, my Zen…wasn't so lucky. She was underwater for over ten minutes, and I couldn't revive her."

Death slowly brought his left hand up and placed it on her right hand; even if he couldn't express many facial emotions, he did understand Mother Gaia's pain at losing someone they cherished.

"I was so angry that there were people behind the major death toll just because they desire something that is better left undesired. Even if there were other ways to ascend to godhood, why go down this route where, while you might not suffer as much personally, everyone else suffers greatly as a whole? Nobody is excluded, no one is spared, everyone must be offered as some sort of payment for your inhumane desire to free the world from divine law…or to rewrite divine law where deities are nonexistent and select humans decide everything? That's insane, unethical, unacceptable. People kill each other on a regular bases, and even I find that extreme, but by what right does any one person or a group of persons have to decide everyone's fate? Who has the right among people to decide who lives in a new world and who doesn't in a new world? Who decides among people…who gets to live and who has to die for everyone else? No one that is human, no one that is mortal has that right to decide such things."

"Only the gods have such rights?" Mako asked.

"Yes…and no," she answered. "As a whole, life must be lived within the time that the universe allows. Divided, anybody can live for as long as they possibly can, but only within the moral boundaries, meaning that you never take someone else's life to extend your own, even if it was only for one more day…or one more minute."

"Take someone's life to extend your own?" Death questioned; it might've been something he had done.

"She doesn't mean like what you did when you still had your living flesh, brother," Mako corrected him. "Some forms of murder can be viewed as cheating fate, but you didn't defy it. Before you became Death, Death was beating around your bush, unable to split it in half until you fell from mortality…and you let it happen after you got revenge. You didn't try to fight for your life any more than you did years ago, and you didn't try to fake your death."

"Believe it or not, Mako, your brother's one of the Masters of Death," Gaia expressed.

"What?" Death questioned again.

"You're a Master of Death…by accepting the unacceptable," she explained.

"How so?" Mako asked her.

"No one can truly live forever, and there are worse things than dying. But beyond that, one masters Death by accepting that one's fate to die…in inevitable. You can't run from Death and expect Death not to come after you…as he comes for everyone that must be taken to the afterlife…until they're judged by the greater forces at work." She answered in greater detail. "Not many people accept their fate…and very few lost souls that become the Horseman of Death for the Restorative were masters for accepting their fates."

"How many were there that did?" Death asked, curious. "The ones that came before I did?"

"Excluding you, there were at least thirteen others that were Masters of Death, which would make you the fourteenth Horseman of Death to achieve the same status. Though, out of all the horsemen, you're a unique case; none of the horsemen that came before you had a twin that accompanied him."

Death looked at Mako, who returned a similar glance before returning to look at Mother Gaia.

Mother Gaia then uttered, "There was something you wanted to ask me, wasn't there, Death?"

Death shook his head and responded, "What was that?"

"Was there something you wanted to ask me about?" She repeated, and Death nodded that there was.

"Before my death," he explained, "I had a dream or a vision. There was this girl I've never met. A little girl, always smiling at me, saying things to me that I didn't fully understand. I think she even said to me that, if something had happened between her and myself, it wasn't my fault. She's something of a haunting for me…and I don't even know her name and what she means. Do you?"

Mother Gaia remained quiet for a minute, pondering what needed to be said to him, and then took in a new breath.

"The little girl with a round tummy that smiles at you," she started, "is someone close to you in another life, lifetimes away from this one that is purgatory. People believe in something called the multiverse, which comprises every universal plane within it. An example would be to say that, in this world, this universe, you used to be a boy disregarded by the people that condemned you, and now you're a Horseman of the Restorative. In another, you could be another orphaned child of one of those education-deprived societies left to suffer, and in another, you're a well-off child with a happy life, with friends and family that love you for you. In another, you're probably married to a girl you knew for years, and in another, you're probably married to a different woman that you, originally, couldn't stand because there was a love/hate relationship between you two. There could even be a universe where you're the victim of incest or in an incestuous relationship with a sister or cousin."

"Then, the girl is someone I know…that resides in another universe," Death expressed. "But, then, why does she affect me? I don't know her in this life of purgatory, and I didn't know her when I was alive."

"It's just something that happens to some people," she explained. "Some people can experience things that are associated to different incarnations of themselves from other universes, depending on which universes affect neighboring universes more than others. Every universe affects another, and it's likely the universe this girl comes from is close to this one, allowing you to be affected by memories or feelings the you that resides with her carries within himself. Maybe you know who she is, deep down, but you're too full of anger to hear her name be spoken to you. Try to let go for a moment. Let go of your sense of hatred, your feelings of being condemned and desires for revenge, knowing you've done what you needed to do."

Death turned away from her, shutting his eyes, listening to the sounds of squirrels chirping and birds tweeting, along with the calm breeze of the wind. He let go of his anger, the memories of pain inflicted upon him by many and the pain and death he gave to others. He even let go of any lingering memories toward his mother, who had no place in the cold sack of blood that was his deceased heart. And then, there was no noise, not even the nice ones, around him. Everything was silent.

"_I love you, Shinji,"_ he heard the girl's voice again, in his mind.

"_I love you, too, Rumi,"_ he heard himself say in response, or at least the him that resided with the girl.

He opened his eyes and had an almost-sad look on his face as he got up.

"Who names their little girl Rumi?" He said, though it didn't really seem like he was asking.

_Rumi?_ Mako thought, seeing his brother get up and walk away from them. _So, that's the girl's name that captivated my twin?_

"Mother Gaia?" Death went, catching the woman's attention again.

"Hmm?" She responded.

"Uh…I…uh… Thank you," they heard him say to her, and he left them alone.

"Did he just thank me?" Mother Gaia asked Mako's spirit.

"Yes, he did," he confirmed. "If it makes it any stranger, you're the first person he's ever said such a kind expression to."

"You mean, he's never said it before?"

"Not once. Words of gratitude…words he's never been able to use before…not even with me, though he's never had to with me."

Mother Gaia then noticed how Death went and disappeared behind a tree and wondered, more like a parental figure than a person on a mission, how much emotional damage Death had taken before she met up with the twins. It was likely, that out of the two, Mako had experienced the lesser of the parental evils that exist within societies around the world, which would explain his kinder tone of words, whereas Death spoke with a colder tone, not so different from before he died.

"He needs a new life so badly before the lingering sorrow of his previous life corrupts him," she told the infant.

"A new life to forget the previous one completely…and to be cleansed of all his pain. One thing that I want from a new life is to be with my brother again. I'm still the elder twin, and all I can do is watch over him, unable to protect him. Though full of pain, I am for not being able to help him endure life's cruelty, I would rather die for him again, as many times as I needed to, than to be lost forever."

"You're a kind soul, Mako, just like the other souls I've met before the World Wars and during the American Revolutionary War. And to give up your place in Heaven for your brother, it must be a sign."

"Of what, exactly?"

"That even in a world full of pain and death, there is still hope for everyone. Not a lot of hope, maybe…but it exists. Heh…I believe your brother and the other Horsemen of the Restorative will be the ones needed to ensure that hope spreads to cover the world and undo the great pain that engulfs us."

"For everyone's sake, I hope to see my brother not take his pain out on those that don't deserve it. There's still good in him, only buried beneath his anger."

"I can understand his pain better than you think. It's not the physical pain that troubles him, but the emotional and psychological ones. Even when his heart has ceased beating, it still suffers from what he endured in the past. His only escape from the pain, as well as his only means to recall people and things that he felt he couldn't forget, was drawing pictures every day. But as time slipped through the shadow of what wasn't even a childhood, his hatred against his family grew and grew, more towards his father than his mother, who you might as well say walked out of his life than to stay and raise him. He had to wonder what, if anything, did he do wrong to have his parents abandon him…and have relatives he hadn't known about until after his father dumped him hate him so much, then to discover, in his own fury that he had trouble venting as he got older, that he did nothing wrong, he was the victim, and it was his parents and relatives that were wrong for what they did and they deserved what they got. He also knew that they needed to be punished for their unjustified crimes against him."

"But what of his dual personalities? Driving Force and Slayer?"

"Born from the trauma of committing murder…and being unable to deal with his role in the deaths of his aunt, uncle, cousin and five other lives that were no different from collateral damage in the eyes of people on both sides of the line. But as the anger became more and more internalized, he felt life being shortened to the point where what could've been decades spent on some other profession…become nothing more than a few years during the time he was incarcerated. He somehow knew he wouldn't live to see the age of fifteen, that what time he had left had to be used to get revenge, to make sure that the last person he knew needed to suffer the most for his pain paid the price for his role in his son's despair, so he fought hard to delay the approaching Grim Reaper. Delay, not deny; your brother wasn't going to make the masters behind life and death wait forever on him to cease breathing. When Gendo was killed, he knew he could stop…because he never truly lived…and didn't want to live in a world where people threw him aside like he was a lost cause. With his end, Driving Force and Slayer became one person once more, but they still exist within his mind, and, if Death wanted, he can call upon them and still be himself. It's part of why he wants to make the world a better place for when he gets a new life; remove all ties to the past that you no longer want, from memories to emotions, and you're for sure to have a life that makes up for the previous one that had no happiness at all. He's like the other Horsemen of the Restorative in that regard, for they all want to be freed from the pain of the past, to feel relieved of whatever sins they might have committed to put them where they ended up. Remove your old past, you make room for a new one, with new faces, new surroundings and so on. That's the whole point of reincarnation, which is what they all seem to desire, but they each have their own past reasons for wanting to forget their pains."

Mako thought about it for a while, and then nodded his head to Mother Gaia before disappearing, leaving the woman alone.

-x-

"…You're saying the Third Child has come back from the dead," asked the new commander of NERV to Misato, "like some sort of ghost or demon?"

"I don't know what he is," Misato responded to him in the former commander's office, which, surely in the perception of the new commander, needed to be redecorated. "Death called himself a horseman. I shot him in his head, and he spat the bullet out of his mouth in front of me."

"I'm sorry," Fuyutsuki went. "You just called the boy Death?"

"Not me. Death did. I mean, the Third Child did. Ikari's kid." Misato had spoken, now needing to straighten out her explanation. "All I know about his identity is that he said his name was Death, that he didn't answer to his original name, anymore."

"Death? As in, like, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?" The new commander suggested.

"Yes," she answered, "but he also said he was part of something called the Restorative or Restoration. He said the Angels in each city were protected, and that each city invaded was no-man's land and needed to be deprived of people, otherwise they'd be at the mercy of the horsemen that keep watch over the Angels and the cities inhabited by them."

"So, then, it's possible that…Death will come here," the new commander expressed.

"That's not what he said," Misato told him. "The Geo-Front and Tokyo-3 are viewed as separate places, and the Angel in Tokyo-3's not going to come down here at anytime sooner. Death made it clear that if people could get to and from here without going through the city above, we're safe so long as they stay out of Tokyo-3. Anyone seen in any of those cities by these horsemen will only be given the option of leaving them willingly…or probably be killed."

"And he said nothing else beyond that? No mention of where this Restorative was located or why he was in league with them?"

"No. He just said something that was more personal than anything he was doing. He's aware that people are still talking about him when he was alive, and he wants that to stop, as he's not that boy, anymore. I have reason to believe that he trashed a part of the street I met him on because he found out that people were still speaking of him, which is true."

"The people have nothing better to speak about," went Fuyutsuki, "even when there are giant creatures showing up in cities and forcing them out of their homes, they'd rather talk about a boy that they didn't try to help long ago. People run from what they don't understand that's the size of a building, and all they really care about is someone they don't know or care about."

Misato guessed that he was still affected by his own encounter with Shinji, or Death, as he called himself now. She swore to herself that he looked a little older than he did over a month ago.

"The Committee will have to be informed of this," the commander told them. "Until the Angels are dealt with, one way or another."

"But if the Angels are off-limits, then we'd have to go up against these horsemen, which includes Death," Fuyutsuki expressed, wondering how many horsemen there were; he wanted to think there were four, but there could've been more than that, since he wasn't truly much of a religious man.

The commander dismissed them both from his office and the two walked down the hall.

"Captain Katsuragi, are you sure that…Death didn't say anything other than what you revealed?" Fuyutsuki asked her.

"No, nothing," she answered him.

"And you shot him in his head?"

"I got him in his right eye, but he looked unharmed…and spat the bullet out of his mouth. Nobody survives getting shot in the head all the time."

"When you shot that boy, there was no way you could've killed…because I think he's not a boy, anymore. If what he said was true, then that means he is what he said his name was. Shinji Ikari has become Death itself, and somehow, some way, he has come back from the other side…with a different purpose. Perhaps, a different reason. He doesn't seem interested in his family, anymore, as he hasn't made any point in attacking people for information on his mother, or looking for her."

"He's not interested in his family. He made his peace after he killed his father before he died; there was no reason to continue living."

"It's best to inform the base that, even if they don't go to the city, Tokyo-3 is off-limits and that any mention of Death's previous incarnation is prohibited, and to warn anyone they know elsewhere."

_Oh, Asuka's going to be pissed when she finds out,_ thought Misato, as they entered an elevator.

-x-

With the upgrades on her research on the Evangelions, Yui was able to make an Eva last longer on the battlefield when separated from external power sources. She raised the internal batteries' limitations up to at least an hour at full power, as opposed to the reserves of one-five minutes, depending on how much energy the Evas were able to hold internally. This discovery was due to a failed attempt at creating an artificial soul for the Evas; it seemed that no matter how hard she tried, creating a new soul from scratch seemed next to impossible with existing technology. It reminded her of an old movie about a monstrous, bat-like pterodactyl that lived over ten-thousand years and fought against a giant turtle with flight capabilities, both of which were made by an ancient civilization with technological advances superior to anything people of the modern-day world possessed.

Knock-knock! Someone knocked on the door behind her in the lab, and she turned to see who it was.

"Yes, Dr. Togusa?" She asked the woman that was a year younger than her, chronologically, wearing a white lab coat over a blue dress.

"Have you been hearing the news?" She asked her back.

"No, why?"

"Japan's NERV branch had just released information on something associated to the Angels that showed up in those cities that were emptied out of people. That woman, Captain Katsuragi, had an encounter with someone that claims to be in charge of protecting the Angel in Tokyo-3. He called himself Death, but everyone seems to know him a bit differently. I think his name was Shinji."

Clank! Yui had dropped her pen to the floor after hearing this revelation.

"That's not funny," she told her, trying to stay calm.

"It wasn't supposed to be," Dr. Togusa responded. "I found out from my friends here that found out from their friends in Tokyo-3 that were informed. Captain Katsuragi even shot at the kid in his face. He spat the bullet out in front of her."

"Maybe people misinterpreted the original information, like a rumor."

"Un-uh! He was shot in his face and he didn't die. He was already dead. Dead boy walking."

Yui didn't want to believe it any more than she tried not to. She was already busy with enhancing the technology behind the Evas and creating artificial souls for them, and she had already lost most of her family. All of her family when you included her brother, who she doubt she would be able to reconcile with because her lifestyle back before and after Second Impact. She couldn't even answer his question of whether or not it made her feel bad about everything she did on her part to turn Shinji into a monster and if he hated her for leaving him.

"Plus, his resemblance to the boy that died is too uncanny to be a copycat," Dr. Togusa continued. "What's more…is that everyone that was informed of this was also informed that Death doesn't want to hear people talking about who he was when he was alive. He actually threatened the woman."

-x-

Sitting beneath a tree, Death let time slip on by, blocking out the external. He took Mother Gaia's suggestion of letting go of his anger and pain, and thought of the other universe where he was associated with the little girl with the round tummy. When unfettered by his emotions of hatred, he saw, through what seemed like a large cloud of vast and wavy, spiky, jagged forms, the girl that was Rumi, the incarnation of himself that knew of happiness, untainted by a harsh existence, and several other people that looked like they made a big, unmatched-but-close, happy family surrounding a woman that looked like an older version of Rumi, whom said little girl seemed just as affectionate towards, which left Death to suspect that the woman was the girl's mother, whom he could see was a kind and caring soul that was a rarity among people. He could see himself and the girl walking up a mountain path toward a building that looked like a series of temples (no doubt it was where they lived), spending time in and out of a hospital (he saw that his incarnation seemed sickly for a time), going places across the world, places he had never seen, and the extent of his relationship with her, sealed in a deep, passionate kiss that left Death feeling hollowed out because the way he viewed this series of events and memories from his incarnation's life was like that of an observer; these memories weren't his own, just those of another him that knew how to smile without being angry.

Neigh. His mare caught his attention, finding him under the tree and fed off the grass nearby.

"You've been sitting under this tree the whole you left?" He heard his brother ask him, appearing behind the mare, floating over toward him.

"When you have time to yourself, and are cleared of the negatives of emotion, you find your ability to glimpse into the life of another you strengthened a little more," he explained to his twin. "Has anything happened that I should know about?"

"Nothing has happened. Everything's quiet."

Death then looked up at the night sky, and then at his mare, who continued to consume the grass.

"How was your glimpse into another dimension?" Mako asked him again.

"It was…bitter," he answered him. "He suffered, but he survived because he had people that gave a damn about him and gave him a real future that was deprived of pain. It makes me think of my own misfortune…and how people that condemn me before they even consider my fate are able to sleep at night, knowing that they don't think about who they've harmed by not doing anything."

"People are often cruel to children, brother. Forget about them; they don't matter, anymore."

Death nodded and got up onto his feet and walked over to his horse, stroking her neck. The mare stopped eating and looked at her owner. This horseman had a grip befitting his name, but at the moment there was no malice, no desire to be cruel, no hatred.

"…Rumi…" Death uttered, and the mare turned her head to looked completely at him.

"Hmm?" Mako reacted, thinking he heard his twin say something.

"That's what your name will be now," the horseman said to his horse. "Rumi."

Neigh. The mare responded, and licked the left side of her master's forehead.

"You named your horse after a girl from another dimension?" Mako questioned. "She must've gotten to you hard for you to do that."

Death then climbed atop Rumi's back and spoke to his brother, "It relieves me a little. Makes me feel less angry towards the past, less interested in the lives I didn't take because I wasn't concerned with any loose ends. In fact, I'm nowhere near concerned with loose ends. I'm going to ride around Tokyo-3 now. Care to come with?"

"Sure."

-x-

Tokyo-3's greatest rival in the realm of major cities would've had to been the one and only Hong Kong of China. Despite the devastation of other parts of China, including Hong Kong itself, the great city had been salvageable after suffering extensive damage; the many buildings that remained, including the tallest ones, could be restored, the streets cleaned of debris from the waves, and the people could return to continue their way of living once more. With the loss of the original Tokyo, and the additional lack of popularity of its successor cities, China's major city was the place many wanted to reside in to make a decent living, even those that lived in Japanese territories. It was the better version of Tokyo that Tokyo-2 and Tokyo-3 could never compare to.

Unfortunately, out in the South China Sea, perfectly camouflaged due to the darkness of the night and being too far out for anything but the moonlight to expose it, a giant creature surfaced and began moving toward the lights of the great city. It was another of God's great messengers, tasked with a great purpose: To aid in liberating the planet from a great pain that ravaged its heart and soul. When it was within close range, it surfaced up all the way, revealing itself to the neon lights…and the people that were in the wrong place at the wrong time to bear witness to its arrival.

"Monster!" A guy screamed, and soon everyone was panicking.

"Rrrrrrrraaurgh!" The creature roared, slowly rising from out the water, revealing itself to be larger than that of a massive, naval aircraft carrier.

It then left the water and levitated toward the larger buildings, going for the tallest ones. As the people within the buildings got the message to clear out (and not just because some of them got the idea to yell out that there was a giant monster outside), they failed to see (most likely due to simply wanting to get away quickly) a white horse atop one of the smaller buildings. Beside it was a man in a business suit, but then the man shed off the gray suit to reveal…white robes and the gauntlet with a bow protruding from it, and the hood of the garbed man removed to reveal his scarred, gray-skinned face, the face of Conquest, the Poison Master.

"That's right, people," he uttered down to the lives that would surely live to see another day. "When you see an Angel, when you see one of God's messengers that bring an important message that you either don't hear or don't understand…you run away. You run until you're outside the city, outside the patch of civilization that is to become my domain to ensure the messenger's protected until the message has been delivered in its entirety, and those that refuse to leave…will be dealt with."

He then fired an arrow from his bow, into the air, and watched it explode into a series of burning letters that read, _"You all must leave the city, or suffer the consequences."_ In a way, unlike the other horsemen, he viewed this method in his list of methods to be less violent and it got the word out to those that looked up at it and understood what was being meant. He was certain that people with irreplaceable lives, including families or children, would understand that when an Angel or a Horseman of the Restorative should overtake a city that has been chosen as one of the eight cities needed, they would understand and vacate the vicinity, leaving any that chose not to heed the warning for him to deal with later when sufficient time came and went for him to wander the streets to make sure no human lives were left within the city. For him, the thought of killing children was something he didn't want to do unless he had no other alternative.

"Grrraurgh!" He heard Gaghiel, the Angel of Fish, snarl as he now made his position of dominance on the three tallest skyscrapers in the city. "Grraurgh!"

"Well, at least you're able to fulfill your role now," Conquest sighed.

-x-

"…Well, that makes four cities invaded by Angels and thousands more people forced out of their homes," said Ritsuko, once more frustrated by the fact that each city was no man's land, according to the undead Shinji Ikari, almost three days ago. "Tokyo-3, New York, St. Louis and now Hong Kong, and we can't make a move on any of the Angels for fear of retaliation."

"Not to mention that it seems like each city is being looked after by people running on horses," said Ryoji Kaji, who, unknown to his fellow co-workers, spent most of his time trying to figure what NERV was up to, though that was a problem, and it wasn't entirely because of the new commander; it was because there was people that couldn't go back to Tokyo-3 were living down in the Geo-Front, enforcing an old concept about living and working underground. "I feel like I should be reading the Bible or something. Whatever religious details that talk about horsemen."

"You'd be searching for any information relating to the _Book of Revelation_," went Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki, looking over some printouts he received from the Chinese branch of NERV, detailing the appearance of the latest Angel. "Something from the New Testament of the Bible. _'And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder, and one of the four beasts saying, "Come and see". Then behold a pale horse, and his name that sat upon him was Death, and Hell followed with him'_… Death, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse…and a dead boy brought back to life has become an embodiment of the same force."

"You honestly need to get with the current times, Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki," went Asuka, pissed because of being informed that Tokyo-3 was now off-limits. "Anything religion is old news."

"Which makes some of what was obtained from Captain Katsuragi no less real. How else do you explain someone that died over a month ago up and about, and being shot in the head and not falling over like any other person?"

"But that would be insane to believe."

"Right," went Maya to the redhead, "like the Angels and the Evas are normal."

"You can't actually believe that a dead boy, the very same boy that murdered his father and left his mother for dead…is taking a cue from one of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse?" Asuka suspected from them.

"We don't even know if there's four horsemen, just horsemen," went Hyuga in response to Asuka.

"If there's one named Death, then there's bound to be three other horsemen, each one named after the other members of the Apocalypse," added Fuyutsuki.

"Katsuragi, you sure you shot this guy in his head?" Kaji asked.

"Well, I wasn't aiming for his legs," Misato retorted. "That boy could've killed me if he wanted to, and I wouldn't have been able to do a thing to him."

As the mood in Central Dogma was unpleasant, in Gendo's former office, the new commander was engaged in a meeting with his superiors.

"We may have no choice but to engage the Angels," he was told by SEELE 01, aka Kiel Lorenz, who was determined to have the situation revolving around the Angels. "Starting with the one in Tokyo-3."

"But, sir, we only have one working Evangelion and one pilot, neither of which could deal with the Angel that made the gesture of not doing anything to it again."

"Which is why we're sending over the Fourth Child," he told the commander.

-x-

After doing another check of the Angel to ensure it was untouched by cruel hands, Death, accompanied by his twin, was visiting the store he had broken into when he was Shinji Ikari, seeing that there were many things still in it that didn't get off the shelf the only time he was there. Looking at the selection of clothes available, Death examined his own outfit and found that, unlike his previous wardrobe that he wore to his first death, it didn't really feel right to be wearing it; he could live with the pants a bit, but a red and black coat didn't seem to give him a sense of self that he could put up.

"Tell me, Mako," he got his brother's attention, "do this outfit make me seem out of place?"

The floating ghost baby looked at the teen and sighed, "I'm sorry, but you look like a soldier fighting on the wrong side of the line."

"I thought as much," Death respected, and grabbed a shirt from off the racks and went up into a dressing room. _I looked better with the clothes I died in, with the exception of the injuries._

He removed the coat, revealing his torso, even after his end, still possessed the scars and bruises of his previous life…and the closing bullet holes he got from when he got his horse from that stable house with the horses. Putting on the large shirt with short sleeves and with a description of blood and gore battles, he looked at himself in the mirror, and decided he needed a coat to go with the shirt.

Mako watched as his brother went to the selection of coats and pulled a large, black one off the racks, putting it on.

"How's this?" Death asked him, deciding to keep the pants until he found a better pair.

"Now, you look like you did before your final breath," he answered him. "I like it."

The horseman then grabbed several more shirts, both short-sleeved and long-sleeved, a bag similar to the one he had used to store his firearms, and, just because he couldn't pass up on such a common practice, took another hat for his head.

Suddenly, his world dimmed to a gray-colored realm, with his twin shaded in a darker tone. In front of him, instead of the street that led to his horse, was the very girl that had haunted him for a while, dressed in armor like a little samurai, but her gold-colored armor looked almost organic in a way, and her expression was one of concern mixed with an innocence that was lost to him.

"It's good to see you, even though it's not an anticipated meeting," the girl, Rumi, said to him.

Death turned to look at Mako, who seemed frozen in time, floating in the air behind him.

"Oh, he can't hear us or see me," Rumi explained. "This is just between you and I."

"You're Rumi? You're the little I knew in a different dimension?"

"Yes…and no," she told him. "I'm not really the little girl you see me as. I'm just a small part of her, the part she knows nothing about, that can see into other dimensions, see other versions of people she holds dearest to her heart. Yet the one that she gave her heart to, the one she professed her love to, despite the gap in age and the difference in origins, was a version of you, and so I looked to this dimension to find you. Your life has changed a lot from most of the other lives lived by other versions of you."

"Why are you here to see me?" Death asked her.

"You're going down a road that isn't easy to deviate from. You have done so in your living state, but as a soul lost in purgatory, it gets further complicated. You have your reasons for doing what you do, but should everyone pay for the sins committed by those that came before your time and those of the other horsemen you now work with?"

"Only if they stand in the way," he told her.

"But…what of those that are incapable or are unable to follow a simple instruction? A man that has lost the use of his legs can't run like those around him, may even be forced onto the ground, and make an attempt to drag himself to the safety of the outside of the city that needs to be emptied of people. Or a woman whose mind became shattered because of some mayhem that affected her, leaving her, mentally, blind and deaf to her surroundings; she wouldn't be able to leave a city an Angel has invaded…because her consciousness was too degraded for her to make choices of accepting something or refusing. You shouldn't cause the end to anyone like that; it'd be like giving someone a thirty-second head start to run away from you before you go after them…and then chasing after them after only ten seconds go by…or calling a baby's name during roll call, as though you expect that baby to speak up when they're only a few weeks or a few months old, unable to speak, unable to walk, unable to understand what's going on around them."

Death sighed and thought about it for a while, remembering how, in his final days, he let a boy's abusive father off the hook because the boy that was abused begged him not to kill him. Instead, he shot him in the leg. He also remembered sparing the lives of four teens that were with the one he murdered for killing a kid's puppy in front of said child, letting a pregnant girl live after he killed some cops that came looking for him; all of it being like he couldn't murder children again after killing three of them from his lost childhood, so he transferred the majority of killer tendencies toward those that were older than he had been. But he assumed he could still murder children if they got in his way or caused him trouble he didn't need to be bothered with.

"At least take into consideration that not everyone needs to die because of an unheard warning or because they're unable to get away of their own volition, Death of the Restorative," the girl suggested of him. "I'm not telling you to do something totally different. I'm only asking you to think about doing such a possibly. People think of you as a monster, so you should try proving to them that you're not."

"Death is always a monster."

"But it isn't a monster of absolution. Death can't decide the fate of all living things. It's pointless to even attempt such a dark act, and that's the whole point of dying."

"How is there a point to dying? It sounds pointless."

"And that's the whole point."

"Death is the only fairness anyone gets at the end of their life, regardless of what they've done in life."

"Just think about it for a while. Let go of your sense of hate and contempt."

Suddenly, the girl began to fade out of his perception, as though she were leaving him now.

"Wait," he attempted to stop her. "I have one question for you."

"Ask away," she told him.

"The me that lives with the little girl, Rumi… How does he get through each day, living with the past?"

"He doesn't. He has Rumi, her mother, his cousins, aunts and uncles. They help him each day. He's put his pain his parents left him experiencing for the last years of his life behind him, left buried in the darkness to suffer for making him suffer, and moved on with his life…and his parents lost their lives in a murder-suicide caused by his mother once she came to the realization that she had hurt too many people to ever be forgiven, and that her husband was just as foul as she was to people, just so that you know of their fates, in case you were wondering."

"So…he, basically, has a happy ending to a sad story that is his past."

"The only sadness in his tale is that his parents would never know the love he has for the people he grew up with. You can have a happy ending, as well…if you try hard to seek alternatives to all that you do against others, for others. Just let go of your anger, you grief, your vengeance. You'll understand…in your own time. Also, what will transpire in the future…will be something that only you and the other Horsemen of the Restorative can deal with, and if you can't find a way…no one else will."

Then, Death felt the world around him return to the semblance of normality it had, with the colors retaking their places and time resuming its course.

"Death?" He heard Mako say to him.

"Yes?" He responded.

"Are you really going to wear that hat all the time?"

"No." Death then removed his hat and stuffed it into the bag. "Mako?"

"Hmm?"

"Thanks for being with me in the darkness…and in this state of purgatory."

"You're thanking me for two things I did for you?"

"Yes."

"You seem a bit different."

"I…just seem to think Mother Gaia understands my pain, the same as you."

"She might be the only woman that understands. Where to?"

"How about the next city on the Angels' invasion list? It should be in due time. Or…we can take a look at the other three cities of the other three horsemen cleared out. Why be limited to this pathetic heap of space when we can travel to the other places we've never seen outside this pitiable nation?"

"Oh, I'm all for it. Let's go see another city." Mako agreed with him, and disappeared from sight as Death climbed atop his mare.

"Let's go, Rumi," he told her, and the mare neighed, reared up and then rode off down the street, and they disappeared around a street corner.

A/N: I hope the people that read this find this to their amazement so far. I'm already on the path to making Shinji/Death a bit more positive and less negative, though not too negative; he still needs to be able to kill those that get in his way. Hong Kong is now Gaghiel and Conquest's territory! Which city do you think will be next on the four remaining cities that need to be emptied out of people? Any suggestions? I could sure use some, since the point of having eight cities emptied is to have them correspond to the four corners of the planet, but I don't know any city that exists on the four corners. Anyhow, read and review and give me some ideas I could consider putting in the story. Peace out!


	5. The Path to Redemption

Creation began on 12-10-13

Creation ended on 12-23-13

Neon Genesis Evangelion

A New Cause: The Path to Redemption

It was nearing the Tenth of August now, and four cities had been reduced to belonging to the Angels that showed up…and they were watched over, periodically, by the Four Horsemen of the Restorative. Not a soul outside the cities, not even the powerful satellites of foreign countries, could sneak up on the horsemen that rode around the streets; the only exception to being eavesdropped were the Angels themselves. There were several hundreds of casualties in each aftermath of the other three cities, New York, St. Louis and Hong Kong, respectively; a limited number of people that didn't get out of each city and weren't accounted for, leaving authorities to presume they were dead as a result of the other horsemen.

-x-

"…I didn't expect the Committee to send another Evangelion and another pilot to help deal with the Angel invasion," went Ritsuko to Misato, at the sight of arrival for the new Eva and its pilot, several miles from Tokyo-3. "Maybe with two Evas, we can take back the city."

But Misato wasn't convinced, and she had a good reason to be. Ever since she saw Shinji Ikari (or Death, as he stressed out his new identity), she had warned all of the Geo-Front that the cities cleared out because of the Angels were no-go zones for people, with the horsemen keeping watch over them to ensure they were protected. Yet, the Committee seemed desperate to eliminate the Angels before they tried to attack the rest of mankind, which seemed unlikely from her perspective. If what Death had told her was true, then the Angels wouldn't do anything other standing around in each city, like they've been doing for the last few days since they arrived in their locations. And so long as the people didn't try to bother them, they wouldn't try to cause any degree of harm toward the human race, excluding the harm they've already done by rendering the people homeless and forced out of their residences.

"We're only asking for trouble from the Angels and the horsemen," she told her friend.

"I'd call them a bluff," Ritsuko countered. "That brat's just pretending to be in charge, but he's nothing more than a child."

"The last time I checked, dead children didn't come back to kill more people or threaten their lives," Misato counter-retorted toward her.

Soon enough, the plane they were waiting for had arrived, with an Evangelion they hadn't expected to see on the giant, crucifix-like holding construct it was on. It looked like Unit-02, but darker and lacking the head scheme of the red giant; instead, it looked like it possessed the shape of Unit-01's head, excluding the horn. Unlike the previous Evas, this one seemed like a real monster, one to be feared and loathed by many.

-x-

"Gaaaurgh! Gaaaurgh!" Gaghiel growled, sounding like an enormous beast that lived deep in a forest or beneath the sea.

Hong Kong had never seen such desolation in years, and all that really happened was the people being driven away by the Angel of Fish that did nothing more than perch itself atop some buildings. While it did so, the streets were wandered through by the Poison Master, Conquest, who was making sure that there weren't any people trying to stay in the city.

Neigh. His horse stopped and turned over to the right, right to where another of Conquest's fellow horsemen was coming down the street.

"I didn't expect to see you coming here…Death," he told the other horseman.

Death, stopping several feet from where Conquest stood on his horse, got off his and put his right arm to his chest, where his heart was, and bowed his head to the eldest horseman.

"Japan was dull when you wander around just one city," he told Conquest. "Why stay when you can see other places?"

"There's always visiting places not on the nonexistent list of cities to be taken for the cause," Conquest suggested. "I hear that cities not affected by Second Impact are still in good condition."

"Maybe, but here was first. So, this is Hong Kong? I can see why Tokyo-3 pales in comparison to the original city and this salvaged one; it's a metropolis of steel and concrete. Tokyo-3's just a cheap dwelling that invites the feeble-minded."

"You ever heard of Atlantis? I once believed they had in their possession a civilization and culture unlike any that exists today. I would've loved to see it for myself."

"I know nothing of any Atlantis; I've never been outside of Japan until the day I died. It's my first time in China today. I'm just going to wander around and see whatever there is to see."

"What is there to see in a city without people?"

As Death climbed back onto his horse, he expressed, "For what seemed like an eternity, I was locked behind walls and kept in darkness, unable to see the light until I was the age you see me as, and by that time, the light hurt for the first few moments…until I felt its welcoming warmth. After that, and after I escaped from the cold walls of any prisons, I swore until the end of my life that I would never be confined again. I guess, even in death, I don't like feeling confined to any one place."

"That's one of the complications of transitioning from your previous life to the state of purgatory one resides in," Conquest told him; he knew the signs of such transitions because he himself had been going through the changes. "Not many things you long to let go of go away after dying. Sometimes, none of what you want to put behind you go away. Awful memories, phantom pain, sins committed, they linger, like a disease you can't properly treat."

Death then asked him, "Are there any awful memories or sins you committed in your past life that haven't left you in purgatory?"

"I only have one sin from my life…and it follows me today," he responded. "I have an unresolved issue that I'm using my position as a Horseman of the Restorative to undo."

"Resurrection?"

"No. Reincarnation, the same as you. But the cause comes first, with the reward being last."

-x-

"…She's the Fourth Child?" Asuka questioned Kaji, pointing to a girl that was in the cafeteria with them and some of the other personnel of NERV.

The girl, the Fourth Child, looked about twelve years old, with blond hair that reached down to the small of her back, pink glasses, and she wore a school girl dress that didn't seem associated with any Asuka had seen before; it didn't look British, Japanese, Chinese, German or American. Instead, the skirt was red with black diamonds, the shirt was blue with yellow triangles and the coat was gray with a stenciled "M" and "A" interlocked on the right pocket on the front.

"Yeah, that's right," he answered her. "Mana Asagi, pilot of Unit-03, the Fourth Child in accordance with the Marduk Institute. She was born in what was left of Nagoya and was shipped away to the States with her father and grandfather after she was three, when her mother died in a house robbery gone wrong. She's been abroad since then, studying in the States, wanting to be a doctor."

"What kind of goal is that?" Asuka questioned; she liked to question the lives of any she saw as competition as an Evangelion pilot.

"It's all she has left of her mother, who's nothing more than a bunch of photographs and a necklace."

Asuka then got up and went over to the girl, something Kaji simply sighed and decided to stay out of.

Mana was reading an old, medical book while eating her meal when the redhead showed up by her.

"Hello, you must be the Fourth Child," she greeted Mana, or rather, she interrogated her. "I'm Asuka Langley Soryu. Let's be friends."

Mana looked up at her and felt interrogated by her and responded, "No thank you."

Ever since she could remember moving to the States, Mana didn't make many friends growing up, and anyone that did offer her friendship seemed only interested in self-satisfying themselves instead of genuine companionship. The only real friends she had before she left to return to Japan were her companions from her neighborhood club, Pursuers of Dreams. She was thankful that she still had their contact numbers.

"Little kid," Asuka called her and walked away; Mana was grateful that she did.

-x-

"…Hey, man, I'm glad we snuck back in this city," a woman said to a man, as they broke into a car and took to the streets.

"No cops in the Big Apple," the man responded. "I'd say this giant creature is doing us a favor."

NEIGH! They heard a horse nearby.

"You think we can outrun a horseman?" The woman asked him.

"Horses can only run for so long," the man responded, and drove faster.

NEIGH! The red, armored courser of the horseman known as War emerged from out of an alley and gave chase after the black Spyder, with the sword ablaze in War's right hand.

"Aw, shit!" The woman cried out. "It's that guy again."

As they drove even faster, War's courser ran to catch up with the car. The horseman refused to let them go, as it would look bad for him if word got out that he let people that were supposed to be out of the city get the best of him. Once he caught these perps, he would send them to Hell; there was no reasoning with those that were hard at understanding that when a city has been cleared out of people and supposed to stay that way, nobody was an exception. Nobody that was alive, that is.

FLASH! He used his sword and unleashed an unstable stream of fire at the car, but all that did was burn the back bumper.

"Aaaaahh!" The woman screamed.

The Spyder turned right, but War made a harder right, staying on the same road as his targets were, and he unleashed another unstable stream of fire at them.

The guy made the car as fast as possible, but War's courser was considered the fastest of the horses belonging to the Four Horsemen of the Restorative, and it was the greatest force he had at his disposal to aid in the cause he was now devoted to seeing achieved. When pitted against other forces that challenged his speed status, he had to establish his status as the top of the food chain of speed.

"You won't escape me!" He yelled at them, and unleashed another stream of fire, this one more stable than the first two.

BOOM! An explosion came from the rear tires and the Spyder skidded toward a streetlight.

"Aaaaaahh!" They screamed, and crashed into the streetlight. "Oh…"

War stopped in front the now-damaged car and got off his horse, approaching his objective. His sword now flaring bluish-white instead of reddish-orange; he was going to make sure that the people outside the city he was tasked with keeping empty got the message that New York City was a no-man's land for the time being.

"One of the flaws with being mortal," he told the injured pair, who saw his sword ablaze and pointed at the ground in front of them, and tried in vain to get out of their seat belts, "is that flesh is not fireproof to intense flames and heat. In my previous life, warlords and rulers would like their meat cooked to perfection in the heart of a roaring fire in their fortresses' pantries."

"Please," the woman, sporting a bloody gash on her forehead that extended to her left eye, pleaded as she tried to get out of her seat belt, "you don't have to do this. My boyfriend and I, we'll get out of the city. We won't come back again."

"That's right," War told her, raising the end of his sword up over his head. "You won't come back."

As he lowered his sword to incinerate the two, car and all, his right arm was gripped by somebody.

"Huh?!" He gasped, and turned his head to face…Death, whose expression was cold and unreadable, and his presence once more unnoticed by the other horseman, making him wonder if this new Death could even be sensed by the other three. "Death, what the Hell are you…"

"Let them go, War," he told him, his own voice sounding devoid of emotion; there wasn't even a degree of concern. "It seems your attempted murder has made them aware of this place being horsemen territory, if not territory belonging to the Restorative."

"How do you know they won't try to come back or tell others to come back if I let them live?" War questioned him. "How do you know they won't persist in trying to return?"

"I don't," Death answered him, "but if the woman values the life of her unborn child, she will stay away from here."

War then looked at the woman more thoroughly, and saw her stomach seemed slightly larger, like she was putting on weight; he didn't notice it at all until Death mentioned it.

"Oh…" The man groaned, shaking some glass shards out of his head, looking up at the two horsemen. "Oh, shit."

"New York is still my turf, Death, and I say they both die for trespassing," War told his fellow horseman. "I let them go, they'll be an undesired message that we're just playing games with everyone."

"It won't be that way. Unless they want to enter Hell, they will back off. Unless the woman wants to lose her baby, she will be silent. But just to be sure that they do understand not to enter any city that an Angel has come to reside in…" Death uttered, and then took out his sickle, with which he used to stab the man behind the wheel in his left shoulder.

"Aaaaurgh!" He screamed, as the horseman jammed the blade in further. "Aaaaurgh!"

"This poor fool will lose his arm," Death told War, "and the woman will lose hers."

After removing his sickle from the guy's shoulder (causing more pain to him), he went to the other side and raised the blade toward the lady's right arm. He waited for her to look up at his face, expecting her to recognize his face from somewhere.

"What the Hell are you?" She asked him.

"My name is Death, for I am the end of all, living things," he answered her, and then stabbed her in the shoulder with the sickle.

"Aaaaaurgh!" She screamed, and Death dug the blade in deeper. "Aaaaaurgh, aaahh!"

"Now, will you leave this city and stay out?" He asked them.

"Urgh…yes…yes…" The woman cried out in pain, and then Death pulled the blade out. "Urgh!"

"And your man?" War questioned.

"Urgh, yes," the man answered.

Then, once they pretty much gave their word (like they even had a choice), Death ripped the doors off their hinges and cut the straps of their seat belts, freeing them from the car.

"Now that we understand each other," he told them, "find another car that runs and get the Hell out of here while you still have breath in your lungs to breathe."

The injured pair then staggered toward a nearby car and got inside, hot-wired the engine and rode off.

"You should've let me kill them," said War to Death. "At least, I would've felt better about them being here when they weren't supposed to be."

"While I still stay true to my belief that nobody is innocent and everyone is guilty, there was no need to condemn two hopeless fools to the same fate," Death responded, and then added, "and what would it accomplish…if not further agony?"

War decided it was moot and sheathed his sword. He was still at odds on how Death could show up undetected when he should've been sensed seconds before he even saw him coming.

"Okay, but do one thing for me," War asked him. "Warn me before you show up. You showing up undetected is messed up. It's like having an unwelcome guest at your side and you don't hear them until they make themselves heard."

Death bowed his head and turned away. This left War to get back atop his horse and wander other parts of the city for more trespassers. As he awaited the second city he would be assigned to empty out of people, he had to wonder what went through Death's head…other than the thoughts that he had. Sometimes, he had to wonder if this new incarnation of the Horseman of Death for the Restorative was even within the boundaries of trust and cooperation.

-x-

"…She's quite calm," went Misato to Ritsuko within Central Dogma's testing chambers as they observed Mana and Asuka's synchronization ratios. "And this is her first time?"

"She was contacted by the Marduk Institute almost ten days ago," Ritsuko explained to her, checking the scores being recorded. "I have to say, her choice wasn't very simple."

"She said no, initially?"

"Yeah, but then they made her an offer she accepted."

"What could a twelve-year-old girl like this one want?"

"Her mother was doctor. She wants to be one, too."

"What kind of girl wants to be a person that makes their living cutting open others?"

"One that respects her mother's career choice and wants to be like her."

Within the plug, Mana, deaf to the outside world she found herself in, thought of her friends back in the USA. There wasn't a day that went by where she didn't think about the life she had to leave behind to fight an enemy that simply showed up in a city and did nothing beyond that. She even saw the monsters in the news that took up residence in Tokyo-3, New York, St. Louis and Hong Kong; they were on the news every other hour so there was no chance of them being ignored. She was thankful that while living in the States, she grew up in small towns that had low crime rates.

"_She's to replace the inadequate Third Child,"_ she heard from the NERV commander when she met him, _"and aid in trying to deal with the Angels being in the cities."_

_His name was Shinji Ikari,_ she thought to herself, having read what she could on the boy everyone hated more than the worst criminals that still lived on the planet. _He spent most of his life in a prison-like environment after playing the role of judge, jury and executioner on his aunt, uncle and cousin, along with several other lives, but what choice did he really have when he sinned? Grandfather believed him to be a victim of abuse, both physical and emotional, and Father believed the boy's family to be immoral in their role for treating him the way they did. The mother that disappeared for over ten years, the father that took no interest in raising his son, the other relatives that took him in only because the father paid them to…only to give him Hell each day until he couldn't take it any longer…and responded with abuse that was greater than what was inflicted on him._

When she had turned ten, she had looked at every article that mentioned the supposedly-dead boy that was still walking the Earth, and how any investigation on why he did what he did to eight lives that got him incarcerated in the first place…was not thorough in any sense until everything went straight to Hell and back again. The police didn't even try to get anything out of the boy, just treating him like they would any other criminal.

_Probably part of the reason why there had been a speedy trial,_ Mana believed; after reading of the silence Shinji displayed during his trial, the judge had decided that he wasn't going to waste everyone's time with a child pretending to be a deaf-mute. _Still, it seemed totally unfair to sentence him the way they did. His father wasn't even there, and was rumored to be an immoral person without limits to his cruelty that was asking for trouble to befall him. In a way, he was asking for his son to go homicidal and lay waste to many innocent lives, with his own being the last to be taken on his quest for revenge._

"Her synch-ratio's stable, well within the acceptable range of piloting," Hyuga expressed. "Sixty-three point eight percent."

"That's ten percent higher than the First Child's," added Ritsuko.

"What of Asuka's?" Misato questioned.

"Asuka's synch-ratio is at seventy-seven percent," she answered.

-x-

"…The creation of artificial souls is next to impossible," went Yui, writing down her thoughts on paper. "The only alternative is to imbue Evas with the souls of women that had children after Second Impact. It devastates children, but it's for a brighter future for all of humanity. Their sacrifice will be rewarded."

Of course, hearing herself say that only reminded her of Shinji…and his hatred of her and Gendo for abandoning him…along with the revelation that he had come back from the dead. SEELE hasn't yet ordered her on how to deal with that part of the situation that included the Angels invading the cities and being protected by these horsemen, though she was for sure they would want a scientific solution. Either that or a way to exploit the horsemen.

_Captain Katsuragi's the only one to have had an encounter with Shinji and live after he came back,_ she thought, switching her notes and writing about what she was able to get off the rumors of the encounter. _That included information that was limited. Shinji called himself Death, and that the Angels were protected from the people, along with the cities invaded by the Angels being no-man's land. What, are they trying to force people to overpopulate other cities? To scatter us? They haven't made a single attempt to even try and make contact with Lilith. Isn't removing the human race their plan?_

"_The people that live in the Geo-Front will be ignored so long as they stay out of Tokyo-3."_

"_Ikari's dead son doesn't want anyone talking about him."_

"_We don't go anywhere near those Angel-infested cities, and the Angels don't come after us with those horsemen that watch over them."_

Yui couldn't understand the situation fully because all the rumors from the initially-required information was manipulated, including much of what was really heard by Captain Katsuragi and Death. Whatever transpired between the two, it had to have been heavy and major for Death to tell her. But Yui concluded that there had to be only four horsemen that watch over the Angels, meaning that it was likely that each horseman would be tasked by a higher force to protect at least two Angels. She had to suspect that Death was the protector of the Angel of Tokyo-3, since he's been seen around it.

_I saw a pale horse whose rider was named Death, and Hell was right behind him, _she thought, thinking back to the nightmare where she saw the Four Horsemen. _The rider's name was Death…Death…Death… Why would anyone choose to be that? Why would Shinji choose to be Death? Did I do this? Did Gendo and I cause this to happen to him after he died?_

She then switched from her work on the Evas and what she heard about the Angels…to a folder containing restricted information on the remains of Shinji, confiscated by SEELE for scientific research. She could've petitioned to have his remains cremated (which was probably part of the reason he came back from the dead), but SEELE couldn't let go of the fact that her younger son's brain was abnormal in size and wanted to study the cause of why this was so. So far, all the scientists assigned to study his corpse could deduce that the years of withheld medical treatment and lack of education were factors that aided in the regression or de-evolution of his brain, a rarity that occurred in any other people molded in negative ways.

"I'm surprised they still let you live after all that you did," she heard a voice say to her from behind her desk. "Or should I say…all that you didn't do? Or maybe both?"

She looked over and saw the little boy that was one of Shinji's dual personas seen on television before he died, the child-like persona, and then shook her head in an attempt to delude herself into believing that he wasn't there.

"You're not here," she told him. "I don't believe in ghosts."

"That's okay, crazy lady, I don't believe in ghosts, either," he told her, levitating off the floor and onto the desk. "But even if I'm not here, that doesn't mean you're not talking to me. Even I don't know what's truly going on here. I'm just here, speaking to you, reminding you that you still have blood on your hands, and it's more than what Shinji had on his before he let the Grim Reaper claim his soul after a lengthy battle for more time to get revenge. Maybe he should've killed you, just for good measure."

Yui turned her chair around, trying to ignore him (as well as to stop seeing his face that looked sad and angry with a hidden agenda).

"You can't ignore what you brought upon yourself, woman," she looked in front of her and saw…to her woe (mainly because she now felt she was losing her mind)…the other persona Shinji had before he died, mirroring her son's age up to his death, but dressed in filthy, medical patient attire and with filthy, unkempt hair that knew no grooming or hygiene; the whole of this persona hadn't had any measure of hygienic care a day in its life.

"Why must the both of you torment me?" She asked, burying her face in her hands.

"Maybe it's 'cause you deserve this form of penance," went Slayer to her. "Shinji didn't know what it meant to be happy after you and your bastard of a husband abandoned him and left him to be abused by the scum that was your sister's family."

"But I didn't…"

"You didn't abandon him?" Driving Force questioned her, cutting her off. "Don't lie to us or to yourself. Where, exactly, were you while he spent a little over a year with your sister? And then where were you during the years he spent incarcerated in that mental nuthouse where he suffered further abuse? You hid in the Eva you made from the flesh of Lilith, the mother of mankind, like a coward unwilling to admit they did something they knew was wrong."

"I'm not a coward," Yui told the little boy. "I was just trying to ensure a brighter future for everyone."

"Well, that's a pity, considering the only future Shinji ever got from you was one of a sense of jealousy and betrayal, a well of hate and desire…and an ending that was full of pain and death," the boy told her. "The jealousy stemming from the sight of other kids whose parents never abandoned them, and the betrayal being his own parents left him and put themselves above raising him. His hatred that was born out of the bitter feelings he started having after all his desires for people to be kind to him were shot down. He then lived the rest of his life in great pain until his death freed him from most of it. Most of the pain that comes from being alive, that is. It was all a maddening cause for him to want revenge against the family that started it all for him, as there are no ties stronger than the ones made with blood, and that has ended."

"And the brightness he ever got was a speck of light for eternity in Hell for the murders he committed," Slayer added. "He didn't expect you to live as a sort of scapegoat for his crimes; he just wanted to punish you like how he punished your husband. One parent receives death…"

"…And the other gets life without their spouse," Driving Force finished for his fellow persona. "It's a fitting penalty, don't you think? You left your husband for over ten years…"

"…And he was taken from you the day you decide to come back, thinking you can reach out to the only son you had left alive that wasn't murdered by accident, unaware that the damage was already done, irreversible and permanent." Slayer finished for Driving Force.

Yui gritted her teeth beneath her hands and looked at the two personas.

"I didn't mean for him to turn so dark," she told them.

"But he did," Driving Force responded. "He had to throw his heart away when the world he saw became cruel to him. Of course, that world was just a part of Japan; he'd never seen the world outside of this trashed archipelago. He gave up trying to reach out to a world that turned him away. He ended being dead inside, a child without a heart because people were heartless to him."

"Maybe his return as a horseman is his own penance for his sins," said Slayer. "Maybe even his only chance at being absolved by the gods. I mean, his brother clearly forgives his sins, not that he ever held any degree of contempt for Shinji to start with."

"Mako? But…Shinji doesn't know a thing about him," Yui expressed; Shinji had been too young, not even a month old when Mako was killed by accident, and the knowledge of his elder twin kept hidden from the world, leaving him to believe he was an only child. "How could he know anything about Mako in death when he didn't until his remaining minutes of life?"

"Separated in life, but united in death," Slayer told her. "Twins have a bond that transcends the boundaries of the flesh. It's far stronger than any other bond people have with each other. One half wouldn't go anywhere or stay anywhere without the other half."

"Yui?" Doctor Togusa called out to the woman, as she entered the lab Yui was working in. "They're running another… Huh? Were…were you speaking to someone just now?"

Yui, who was by herself now, looked at her and responded, "No. That was just me, rambling."

-x-

The night life was dead in this city that Nagoya. But then again, any life that was dead in any setting that was an artificial one was dead to Death. So riding around his horse on the streets were what he was currently what he did. Nobody was really around to see him, and those that were out to see him galloping on the streets were likely to be disbelieved or just as likely to ignore him. The air was cold, but Death didn't really react to the drop in temperature; he lacked a pulse, so he also lacked heartbeat and body heat, probably able to match the temperature of his surrounding.

GASP! Death stopped his horse and looked around, seeing the worst replica of that building that used to reside in Tokyo that he recalled seeing in Tokyo-3 when he was still breathing.

He lacked the curiosity to question why anyone would call a department store building 109, but reckoned that it was where he felt something that felt like the pain he experienced during his time in the institute, but not like how he was beaten with batons and clubs. He even remembered the very second he found a way to redirect his physical pain and turn it into a source of strength to use later on.

"Brother," he heard Mako as he manifested beside him, noticing how empty the city appeared with no people out and about, "what's wrong?"

"What do you mean?" He asked him.

"You might not demonstrate facial expressions much of the time, if ever, but I can tell that something's bothering you," he explained. "Something got to you, otherwise, I wouldn't be asking you right now."

Death got off Rumi and walked to the sidewalk, placed his right hand on the ground, and sighed.

"Rumi, come here, girl," he called out to his mare, and she came over. "Smell."

She lowered her head and sniffed the ground, then backed away and whined a little, shaking her head in the negative.

Mako then floated down to the ground and pressed his exposed hand to the ground…and backed away.

"People with foul intent were here…and they did something they should get punished for," he told his brother, and looked down the street. "Their dark scent extends down that way."

"Mother Gaia said that those that served in the position of the Horseman of Death can track the darkness within the souls of those with foul intent like how predators can track their prey. Another of Death's great strengths to be used for the Restorative."

"A man from ancient times once commented that matters of great concern should be treated lightly, while matters of small concern should be treated seriously. It looks like our business protecting the Angels are a matter of great concern that needs to be treated lightly, and this matter that we're stepping into…is one that should be treated seriously."

"And Mother Gaia also commented," Death uttered, climbing back atop Rumi, "that the lessons from the past…will aid in reshaping the darkness of the unwritten future. But sometimes, just sometimes, it's always easier to forget about the past…and the future…and focus only on the here and now. Ha!"

Rumi galloped down the road, ignoring the traffic lights and everything. Now the Horseman of Death was on a mission that was his own, followed by a additional lost soul that was his observer. The journey to the source of this impure energy that Death felt had led the rider of the pale horse to the outside of a large building. It looked plain enough to be one of those average, business-themed buildings, but there was something off that made the Horseman of Death ball up his right hand. It was an odd feeling, like someone had taken their hand and penetrated him with it in his back, reached for his spine…and yanked it out of him. A slight breeze whipped around Death's legs as he got off Rumi, making the bottom of his coat flutter a little bit as he approached the building.

_Now I feel like someone's yelling at me again for something I didn't do,_ he thought, walking up the stairs of a pristine and elegant hallway, leading to a series of locked rooms.

Sniff! He got a whiff of a foul scent coming from one of the rooms and stopped in front of one…and found that it smelled the foulest out of the hallway.

_What is this?_ He wondered, placing his right hand on the door.

FLASH! He saw the interior of the room behind the door, occupied by almost ten men in business suits, two other men that dressed in regular clothes like how he dressed right now, and three women. No, two women and a young girl. Death seemed convinced that she was barely sixteen. All three ladies were dressed in the attire of those that were deprived of dignity and modesty, with the majority of their flesh revealed, including areas that were best left unseen, but the worst part was that they each seemed absent-minded, like the lights were on in their minds…but no one was there to do anything about it.

"…We've been waiting," he saw one of the men in the suits say to the two regular-dressed men, and how one of them, wearing a dark coat, simply gestured like it was nothing serious. "Gentlemen, the main dish has been served. Please, enjoy until you're satisfied."

And then, Death saw things that made him feel uneasy. The other men in the suits approaching the three ladies, all with weird looks on their faces. The ladies seemed terrified, but were unable to rebel or anything, not even scream. His eyes widened at the sight of the suits being thrown aside, revealing varying ranges of aged skin, and the men doing things to the ladies that he had never seen, even in death or from his time in the institute.

_What is this? _He wondered again, seeing one old man put his thing into the young girl's mouth, while another had done the same to one of the women with hair a similar shade of purple as the woman Shinji left alive to warn the world. _What is this?!_

FLASH! He was soon seeing the front of the door once more, but not before seeing three men spill out strange liquid that was neither blood nor saliva, all from their things between their legs that they used on the ladies, covering them with it.

He couldn't take seeing what he had seen these people do, and broke the door down, reducing it to pieces as he stepped inside. The men that were in the suits all looked at him, surprised, sitting in comfy chairs around a table with cigarettes in their possession, and were naked as the day they drew their first breath of life. But the sight of the ladies was the worst he'd seen so far; even when he made himself known, they hadn't reacted to his presence, not even the slightest of screams escaped their mouths.

"Who the Hell are you and what are doing here?" The only man left wearing a business suit asked him. "This is a private meeting."

He looked at him and the two regular-dressed men, then took another look at the nude men…and decided on what had to be done. He unsheathed his sickle…and dashed toward the man in the green jacket, slashing his head and glasses in half!

"What the fuck?!" One of the nude men gasped.

"You're all going to die," Death declared, and then decapitated the man in the suit and the man in the coat. "You're all going to die!"

With three dead men now laying on the floor, Death proceeded to go after the naked bunch, who tried to scatter. He grabbed one of them with grayish hair, took his sickle and skinned his back.

"Aaaaaaurgh! Aaaaaurgh!" The dying man shrieked, blood now pouring from his mouth.

PIERCE! Death then stabbed him in his skinned back with his sickle, killing him outright.

"It doesn't matter if you run from me out on the streets or if you from me under your beds," he told the men left alive as they tried to gather their clothes and run, "Death has come for you."

"Drop dead, kid!" One man shouted at him, pulled out a gun, and fired three rounds at his chest.

Death staggered backwards, but didn't fall from the pathetic move made on him.

"Grrrrurgh!" Death charged the shooter and sliced his gun-toting arm off, spraying the walls with his blood. "You can't kill me."

"Aaaaaaurgh!" The man groaned, falling to the floor.

Death then grabbed his neck and forced him back onto his feet.

"It sucks to be you right now," he told the man, and then slit his neck, letting his choke to death as it became impossible to breathe his final breaths. "Who's next?"

He counted a total of four other men left to send to Hell and went after the next one close by. He flung his sickle at him and struck him in the back of his head.

"Hurgh! Urgh! Hurgh! Urgh!" He heard him babble; the possibility of brain damage was likely, due to the end of the blade sticking out the front of his forehead.

RIP! He removed the lodged weapon, covered in blood now, and the latest member of the slaughtered businessmen fell and succumbed to his mortal injuries.

BANG, BANG, BANG! More gunfire was heard by Death and he felt several bullets hit him in his right arm, just above his gauntlet.

_They don't know when to call it quits,_ he sighed, turning around toward the door he broke down into pieces and saw two of the remaining three men there, holding pistols and aimed at him. "Don't you get it now? I am Death! I can't be killed! Your bullets won't save your asses! They belong to me."

He raised his sickle and charged toward them; the third guy would be dealt with another time. Two for the price of one swing of his blade.

SWISH! He twisted in a three-sixty maneuver and sliced into flesh like a sword through thin pieces of paper, hearing the spraying sounds that blood made when released into the air.

The two men, never able to make a run for their lives, fell to pieces: Their arms fell, followed by their legs and then the rest of them. Death had come so quick, there was no time to scream. Their final thoughts had been wanting to know who and what this kid was and why he came for them.

"One left," said Death, and he returned to the room, entering into what had to have been a sort of storage or kitchen that housed extra drinks and food for the men, and found the last man, climbing onto an open window. "Go ahead and run. It's not going to make a difference. Your fate is sealed."

"Oh," the man, whimpered, turned away from him, and looked onto the streets below. "Please! Just give me a chance to explain! Just give me a chance to explain!"

"What about those ladies you and your friends messed around with and left covered in your, um… Whatever it was that you left on them?" He asked him. "You probably put it in the girl's mouth, as well! Huh?! Was it good for you?! Was it?!"

The guy then looked more closely at the boy…and recalled where he'd seen his face before. It was allover the news about the child that was brought to Tokyo-3 and left it a ghost town after murdering over three-hundred people, including police officers, ordinary civilians, mercenaries, and a man that was his own father, whom he had threatened to kill. And then, there was the rumor that he had come back from the dead, unsatisfied and wanting to take more lives.

"You? No…no, it's not possible!" He whimpered. "You're dead! You died! You were killed! There's no coming back after that. You died, there's no coming back! There's no coming back!"

Before Death could even take a step toward him, the man jumped out of the window and descended toward the ground. All Death saw was a man whose mind had become fragmented by the mere memory of his end…and having come back with a new cause to fulfill.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!" He heard the man cry out, and then…

THUD! He merely looked at the now-dead man that was roadkill for whatever came out at night to pick at whatever was edible.

"A pity," he sighed. "He did the honor of killing himself for me."

"Ohmp!" He heard a sound coming from within the other room and returned. "Oh…"

The young girl, laying against one of the chairs, had vomited onto the floor, her eyes glazed over. Beside her was the woman with hair a similar purple to that other woman in Tokyo-3, looking like she was ready to call it a life. And to Death's left was the second woman with green hair, wasted and looking like she was also ready to call it a life. He was so caught up with the men that he had completely forgotten about them, but that he came back to find them still around, he had the opportunity to deal with them.

He approached the girl, turned her onto her around so that her back was against the chair, and raised the blade of his sickle up over her head. In an instant, he saw her eyes slowly meet his, and how her eyelids slowly came up in what had to be a failed attempt to display fear.

"…Please…" The voice of the purple-haired woman came. "Please…don't kill her… Please…don't kill my daughter."

"Be quiet," he told her, and brought the blade down in one, quick swish.

-x-

"Hmm?" Conquest mumbled, looking up at the night sky of Hong Kong while he was standing in the sand on the beach.

-x-

"Hmm?" War mumbled, looking up at the afternoon sky of New York as he stood atop the rebuilt Empire State Building.

-x-

"Hmm?" Famine mumbled, dropping his seventh cheeseburger and looking up the afternoon sky of St. Louis.

-x-

"Hmm?" Mother Gaia mumbled, looking up from her garden and at the daylight sky. "Death…what have you done?"

-x-

The young girl didn't even react to Death dropping his sickle down upon her, and Death wasn't the least bit surprised that she didn't try to evade his move. What surprised the mother, however, was that the sickle had struck the floor after Death brought it down, and there wasn't a mark on her daughter that she could see. It was like Death had intended to kill her, but miscalculated or made a goof.

Snip! The girl's red bondage outfit that wrapped around her arms and torso, as if by Death himself, came loose and fell to the floor, leaving her naked.

SWISH! SLASH! Death swung his sickle at the mother and the lady with the green hair, and their bondage outfits came off; he had cut off their inappropriate outfits, leaving their flesh untouched.

"Wha?" The woman with the green hair uttered, just as Death walked away from them and went to the men he killed, starting to remove their clothes that they were either killed wearing or were fortunate enough to put back on before he killed them.

He tossed to them whatever had little to no blood and said, "Put those on. Can't have you leaving as you are now."

The green-haired woman slowly moved to grab the clothes this boy had thrown to her and placed on a loose shirt.

"Thank you," she told him, just as the purple-haired woman grabbed a pair of the pants and struggled to put them on.

Death found a phone and picked it up, dialing a number and responding to the woman, "Your gratitude is unnecessary. These men had it coming to them. I just happened to be around when I was."

As the women helped the girl into whatever they could, a voice picked up on the phone and went, "Police, state your emergency."

"There's been a series of murders tonight, along with other crimes," Death said to the person.

"Okay, where did this happen?"

"In the building I'm using this phone to call with. I hope you can trace this phone, because I won't be here when I hang up. You also need to send a doctor. Three ladies were being abused by the murdered men in harsh ways."

"Okay, and who is this I'm speaking to?"

"Death of the Restorative, and I've passed judgment on these jerks I've killed to free the ladies of their unwelcome hands," he told the receiver and left the phone on the floor. "I hope you three recover from this nightmare."

He started to leave toward the door, but then stopped again, turning back to them, feeling like something was left undone. All he saw were three victims…and one last problem that needed to be dealt with before he left.

"Don't move," he told them, taking out his sickle again.

"What?" The green-haired woman asked, just as he approached them.

"Don't move," he repeated.

"Please," begged the purple-haired woman. "We didn't do anything wrong."

"It's not about what you did," he told her, raising the sickle up over their heads, "it's about what I'm going to make sure you don't do. Don't move."

SLASH! He brought the blade down upon them again, but all they did in response to being untouched by his weapon…was vomit out blood and other fluids for a minute.

"Sayanora," he told them, and then ran out the room.

In eight minutes, the sounds of police sirens could be heard, and the approaching footsteps of uniformed civil servants and licensed physicians. No one ever saw a dead boy that had been plastered on the news or a horse with a horn on its head getting away.

-x-

RING-RING-RING! Yui awoke to the sound of her phone ringing, and picked it up.

"…Ikari, speaking," she uttered, knowing that only her superiors of the SEELE organization would call her to hear of the progress she was making on the Evangelions. "What? You think he murdered some people in the city?"

-x-

News in Nagoya was now the fear that a dead boy that had come back to life had shown up in the city and killed several businessmen after finding them engaging in sexual activity with two women and a young girl. As much as Death didn't want the people speaking of him when he was alive, the news had to speak of him as an undead.

"…Most of the bodies belonged to some shady men from the police and film industries," a man on the streets told a woman. "Supposedly, they were involved in a string of kidnappings involving women to use in their adult films. God only knows why this kid came to kill them."

"…Two of the men that were killed worked in that adult film shop called _Peach Paradise_," another man told his friends as they walked down the street. "They might've been the ones behind the kidnapped nurse from the hospital a few weeks ago."

"…Her husband was furious about what happened to his wife and daughter. He wanted to sue for the crimes committed against his family, but the men were killed."

"…It's going to be a hard battle for the girl when she gets out of the hospital…"

"…This kid called himself Death. Maybe he was…"

"…Go after the boy for murder? What, do these murders make him more dangerous than when he was alive? He could've killed those women that were raped when he killed the men, but he didn't. Surely, wherever he has run off to, they'd probably just wanna say that they're grateful to him…"

"…But why would he bother killing people he didn't even know?"

People were constantly asking each other as the gossip got heavy. No one really knew why a kid that should've been dead would choose to come back and save the lives of a trio of women that were being sexually assaulted by men of shady business. It drove them mad with curiosity on why.

-x-

Conquest rode his horse to the place on the island where he met up with the other three horsemen, wondering what had transpired. All he knew was that something had happened, and it rattled him with curiosity on what it was. At the edge of the cliff on the path, he saw the courser belonging to the Horseman of War and the skinny field hunter belonging to the Horseman of Famine, both of whom seemed disturbed by the same thing he was disturbed by.

"You two, as well?" He asked them, getting off his stallion.

"Uh-huh," responded Famine, looking like he could kill for something to eat right now.

"What's with him?" Conquest asked War.

"He just finished eating his eighth burrito," he answered back, "and he's still hungry."

"Does he ever stop eating?"

"Only when I'm on the job," Famine expressed. "We have reason to believe that Death did something."

"What reason should we have to believe that he's responsible for this meeting?" Conquest asked.

"Has it ever occurred to you that, while we can detect each other out of the three of us, we can't detect Death, and we never know he's near until after he makes himself known?" War questioned him. "The last time I saw him, he kept me from taking the lives of two fools that wandered back into the city I was assigned to keep empty, and he made it heard that killing them would come if they or anyone else should come back while the city's off-limits."

"I know we're supposed to work together, even though we haven't had a reason to yet," went Famine, "but Death seems to be very…self-driven? Has other interests, perhaps? He doesn't seem that big on conversations between himself or anyone else."

"Except his twin," War stated.

"We'll ask him what has happened," Conquest reasoned. "Until then, we should continue with our duties until the next Angel arrives to lay claim to a city that will be used for the cause."

"I killed a bunch of flesh fiends last night," came Death's voice, right from behind Conquest, surprising the three horsemen.

"Oh!" Conquest gasped, turning around and seeing the Restorative Horseman of Death, once again noticing that he was wearing regular clothes instead of what he had on prior to going back out into the world as a member of the Restorative.

"Uh, Death," went Famine, taking a step back from his fellow horseman. "When did you get here?"

"Just now," he answered, which made the three worry; he never gave the slightest indication that he was coming, not even the slightest indication that his presence was felt by them. "I killed fiends that corrupt flesh and tarnish innocence that lingers in this guilty world. I made them suffer, dragged their souls to Hell, and set free three lives that needn't be soiled any further with the foul fruit of their sick and twisted tormentors."

"Wouldn't that make you a baby killer now?" War asked him, which earned a glare from Conquest.

"These women, if they were raped by the men that were killed, were likely done a great service by Death," he told him. "Not everybody wants anything to do with somebody that has left their dark mark on them. If you found a woman that didn't want her rapist's child growing inside her, what would you have done in Death's place?"

"I wouldn't know," he responded; he never liked to think of the troubles of others, no matter how much they suffered.

"No one wants to live with the reminder that they were hurt," went Famine. "It doesn't matter what form that reminder takes, be it a scar, a lost limb…or even a person."

Death then turned away, taking his horse with him to see Mother Gaia.

-x-

"…Your act against dark souls out there rattled the other horsemen, as well as myself," Mother Gaia told the Horseman of Death, as she rose up from off the grass, seeing him approach her, dressed in clothes she didn't expect to see him dressed in. "Wow, Death…I didn't expect to see you with a change of clothes. I gotta admit, you look better in regular clothes."

"It's only the boots and pants that have remained," he told her. "I was just out in the night…when I just…felt the presence of people with foul intent."

"You felt the presence of trouble-making businessmen, police and filmmakers taking advantage of people that were just minding their own business," she corrected his speech. "You took the lives of a bunch of sexual deviants, banished them to Hell, as well as undid the grand results of their raping of those women, undoing the unplanned and undesired pregnancies they were going through."

"So, I killed children? Just like before."

"No, you didn't, Death. They were in the earliest stages of development, so early that they had no time to have any souls affixed to them. Scientists would call humans in such stages of development zygotes or fetuses…and in the view of the mortal concepts of law and order, if a fetus can't survive outside the womb, then it's not a person."

Death then thought of his twin, something he felt he needed to question.

"His soul was affixed to his flesh the instant he drew his first breath, as did yours," he heard Gaia say to him. "You were thinking of your brother just now, were you not?"

He nodded that he was.

"If a child survives outside the womb, having taken a breath, then it's considered a person. Even a fragile life is considered a person, even if they only lived for a day, even an hour."

"Have you met any souls that lived as mortals for less than a year?" He asked her.

"Thousands of them. Hundreds of thousands."

Suddenly, Mako appeared beside Death and expressed, "So many lives that lived for less than a year. It's unfair."

Gaia looked at him and responded, "Famine would agree with you."

"Oh? How so?"

"That's something you'd have to ask Famine about. Most of those souls have been reborn periodically ever since their initial deaths."

"And I'm guessing he's one of the souls that didn't get reborn; he got lost between death and rebirth," went Death.

"Again, you'll have to ask Famine about it. But you're close to the nerve that strikes pain cold." She told him.

Death then sat down while Mako floated down to the grass, barely touching the smallest blades.

"Was my brother…wrong for doing what he did to those cold souls and those women?" Mako asked.

"If this were any other Horseman of the Restorative, I'd give the same answer: You weren't in the wrong, you used something performed negatively…and brought out something positive. Things get worse before they start to get better, but not every life needs to be taken. Although, and I must admit, your actions might've started something with the rest of Japan as a Horseman of the Restorative. People may start to fear you as some sort of vengeful ghost, going after them."

"Then they should save their breath. I'm no ghost, and I'm not vengeful, anymore."

-x-

Once her additional synchronization tests were done, Mana returned to her room that NERV assigned to her. When she wasn't reading up on medical research, she looked at the newspaper on what had been printed about the supposedly-dead boy that was Shinji Ikari. What interested her the most so far about him was that he killed some men, but spared the lives of the women that were assaulted. That almost made him some sort of an antihero, someone that wasn't bad…but not entirely good, either, but somewhere in between.

_Shinji Ikari… Death… A boy that killed at a very young age… A force that is, literally, the enemy of life, all living things. What could bring someone back and make him something more…and less…than a human being?_ She thought, laying in her bed. _And why would he come back so soon after he died? Does he have some sort of unfinished business that he needs to resolve? Did the kami charge him with a mission that's in league with the Angels, whom NERV says are the enemy out to destroy all of mankind? Father always said to be mindful of others and always take into consideration that nothing is what it seems. Everything is connected, nothing is what it seems, and every question has many answers, just as every answer raises many more questions._

She wished the newspaper had printed photos of the crime scene in Nagoya, but they were probably deemed too graphic to be shown to the world. It made her think back to what her grandfather had once said to her what her mother had once said, that there was light and darkness within us all, and that there were a few of us, just a few, that often encounter our opposite sides, however they appear.

"_If people that let the good in them show more than the bad, then it's likely that they shall encounter their darker selves, and the reverse would be true, too, that those that show the worse of themselves to other will encounter their positive selves." _She heard her mother had once said.

_I do want to believe that,_ she thought to herself. _Just like I want to believe that maybe this dead boy brought back to life is not who he appears to be, that there is some good in him. And maybe these creatures, these Angels aren't what NERV makes them out as._

While she rested up until who-knew-when the next series of synchronization tests would occur, or when the Evas would go into conflict with the Angels, the Second Child, Asuka, was wandering around the base, looking at the spots where several dozens of NERV workers were slain by the Third Child. She had no idea, initially, that this one boy was capable of causing so much death; with the bodies having been collected and the blood and gore cleaned up, only the damages to the walls and floor remained, with no effort being made to repair them.

"What brings you down here, Asuka?" She turned and saw Kaji, who had been wandering around himself, minding his own business.

"Just looking at the Third Child's handiwork," she explained, touching the part of the wall in front of her that a bullet still lodged in. "How big was the body count again?"

"He had killed over three-hundred people before he died," he answered her.

"Crazy."

"Hard to believe."

"If he had been caught sooner, more deaths could've been prevented. What was the previous commander really thinking, bringing that kid here? He had to have been crazy about wanting him to pilot the Eva."

"Whatever his reason, it wasn't enough to persuade a child that had decided early on that his old man had to suffer for his neglect. He was already a troubled youth to begin with, and nothing that was done to him helped him to get over it. The damage was done…and there was no way to mend it."

"Yeah, I read his file, the good it did me. The disturbing will it takes…to murder that many people…all because the people you hate the most…either left you alone or didn't do anything for you."

"For Shinji Ikari…or Death, as he's now being called, he's a remarkable example of people with breaking points and how to reach them. You can only push someone so far…until they break…and he broke because of what his family, his parents, the relatives he was entrusted to, did to him. It must've been too much for his heart and he did the only thing that he could do to people that didn't show him any real love or acceptance: He made pieces of the problem go away."

"But why?" Asuka questioned. "Why, after killing the previous commander, and the First Child, along with the majority of the police and anyone else that got in his way, has he come back and might be affiliated with the Angels to the point where he says to Captain Katsuragi that they're off-limits?"

"Who knows?" Kaji answered her. "Whatever the reason, however the cause of his return, however we choose to perceive the situation we're in, Death has come back, he may very well be in league with the Angels, who might be the messengers of God himself, and that makes the boy an enemy. And because he's the enemy, he needs to be stopped, one way or another."

"Except how does one kill Death?"

"Asuka…no one can kill Death."

-x-

He never thought to see what existed underneath the surface of Mother Gaia's island, and never thought to see what had to be the physical form of the Restorative. There were thousands, if not millions, of people that seemed to belong to various races, dressed in a variety of casual clothes (he didn't see anyone dressed in a manner similar to what he saw the women he saved were dressed in), doing many things. Some were working on computers, others were serving meals, there were even children running around and throwing softballs around a large patch of space that seemed the size of the city he had reduced to a ghost town.

"Oh!" He stopped at the minor impact that a small ball made on his right leg, and a little girl that slowed down her approach of him. "Oh… Sorry, sir."

Death then picked up the ball…and handed it back to her.

"Go," he told her. "Play."

She accepted the ball and ran off to rejoin a bunch of other girls.

Once he found a space where he could sit and observe, Death sat down and looked down at the people. They looked like they belonged to most parts of the major powers of the world, but they were all here, working together on various tasks, under the light of the sun that found its way into the large caverns that looked like they had been made by other means, since he saw large machines.

"People that wish to see the purpose of the Restorative fulfilled, Death," he turned and saw War behind him, looking down at the people, as well. "Some of them that lost their way when half the world went away, others from parts of the world less than habitable, and others that don't see eye-to-eye with what others want for the world. Look at them, you got children being educated, parents being parents to their children, even those that aren't theirs, men and women of various cultures learning to accept others. It's quite a feat here."

"It's…strange to see them down here," he told War. "Don't they have places to go back to? People that are looking for them?"

"Most of the people here don't have a home to go back to," he turned and saw Famine nearby. "For them, Mother Gaia's island is their home. It's their sanctuary, their haven… The only place that exists in a world that has been maimed and left with people that would sooner use and exploit you than accept and work with you to do something noble and for a good cause."

Death turned away from Famine and looked back at the people below them, seeing the children playing around or being educated by people that were willing and able.

"You don't understand it completely, do you?" War asked him.

"I've never people like this before," he told him; the only people he ever saw were ones that either hated him before they even knew who he was…or flaunted their own happiness in front of him like they were trying to provoke him.

"Nobody's out to get anyone around here," went Famine. "They accept each other. Acceptance…is one of the necessary steps to salvation and redemption."

"If you can't accept someone, anyone, regardless of who or what they are, then you can't be saved just yet," added War. "It's a sad piece in the history of history's mistakes and the attempts made to fix them. A famous mortal once said something that led to phrases that people don't take seriously elsewhere: _'Those who fail to learn from the mistakes of their past are doomed to repeat them'_, also stated as, _'those who fail to learn from history are destined to repeat themselves'_."

"Leading to a vicious circle without end," Death sighed, though the only circle that ever made sense to him was the one of life and death; people live…and people die. "But what hope is there for those that don't accept?"

"There's either a little," said Famine, "or there's none at all."

Death then got up and said he was going back to Tokyo-3 to ensure Sachiel was protected from harm.

"Oh, Death?" War stopped him for a while longer. "What you did in that other city, where you killed those men and got help for those women?"

"Hmm?" Death responded.

"That's a sign that you're on the right path. The path that leads to cleansing."

Death then nodded his head in the positive and left to get his horse.

"He's still not very talkative with the rest of us," Famine expressed.

"Give him time," War responded. "We'll need to sort out our personal problems before we can all ride together in due time."

"Say, who gets the next city to be selected by an Angel?"

"It's most likely me," War told him. "It's not exactly a rotation. That's just the way it is."

-x-

Sometimes, she had to wonder if Lilith's primordial blood, the very source of all life on the planet, was the proper material to use in preserving the remains of her sons. Yui had entered a secluded chamber in the research installation, accessible to only those with the proper clearance, and looked at the floating remains of her children as they were suspended in the LCL in separate tanks. She had to consider that she was bound to be haunted by the sight of her boys being poked and prodded like cattle in the sense that they were being used for research, and that she let the scientists do so.

_I don't know how much more of this I can take,_ she thought, standing in front of the tank that housed Shinji's corpse. _You're here, preserved and being examined…and you're out there in the world, still killing people. What if you're doing this because there's no hope left for anyone, that there's only murder to be performed? Is the only salvation left for everyone is to die? But you saved those women. You saved those women and killed those men because they had raped them so many times. Shinji…Death… What are you really doing? Why are you doing this? Are you punishing me?_

She looked at the preserved remains of her younger son's aged head; even when he was lifeless, he still had a look that seemed wracked with anger. It was as though she expected him to answer her questions, but his soul was so far away that his body, however lifeless, was unlikely to respond to her pleas. If she was ever to receive any answers to why her son was doing all that he was doing as a horseman, she'd have to wait and see what would happen in the future.

A/N: Here's the latest chapter. Tell me how you like it. I hope the next chapter will feature another city being emptied out by the Angels and the Four Horsemen of the Restorative. I just need to decide how and in what way. Also, I just had to use the bits of the hentai anime Chains of Lust in this chapter to aid in making Shinji/Death more in touch with his positive side. Until next time, everyone. Peace!


	6. Violence and Sickness

Creation began on 12-23-13

Creation ended on 01-10-14

Neon Genesis Evangelion

A New Cause: Violence and Sickness

Death sat on the ledge of a skyscraper, overlooking the desolated city that was the disgraceful Tokyo-3. The Angel that was Sachiel had remained untouched, which was a good thing; it made his duty of ensuring his safety easier. His horse, Rumi, was sitting behind him, also overlooking the Angel and the empty. It was a sunny day, the same as the day before ever since the Japanese nation lost its other seasons.

"Hot, brother?" He turned to face his twin, who was now looking down at the empty streets below.

"My body doesn't have any heat, Mako," he responded; his undead state left him deprived of any body heat or a pulse. "I don't feel the heat of the sun's rays on my skin."

"I know. But it never hurts to ask, to remind oneself that they still have some sense of humanity left within their soul, however degraded it is."

"You know, I could almost crack a smile or laugh, but I can't, really."

"Knowing that you speak with me…is enough to assure me that you may find your ability to smile without effort in the future."

"Mako, I just realized something. You're a lot smarter than I ever was in life, even in death. So you know what to say that I don't understand."

"I was in Heaven for over a decade, so there was ample opportunity to be educated in helpful facts, wisdom and so on. I'm particularly proud of the knowledge of religious phrases that are useful when teaching others. You care to hear what my favorite phrase is?"

"Stab me."

"_'Let he who is without sin cast the first stone'. _No one that has done wrong should be judged by others because everyone has done wrong. Everyone that has committed a sin, however small or large, shouldn't condemn those that have done no wrong to anyone else."

"Like me? Before I sinned?" Death asked him.

"Yes, Death," he answered him. "Exactly like you. You didn't do anything wrong, and everyone around you condemned you, just because of who our parents were in life. And then you did do wrong, but only because the people didn't show you any real affection. You…you said there was one time when you were sick some time after that man left you with that other man and woman with the boy, right? What happened when you were sick?"

"That woman…that bitch I stabbed to death… I had a fever, and she just left some soup and medicine beside me as I was in my bed, didn't even make an attempt to help me beyond that, like she hated me before she even knew me. I didn't even hate her before she said those awful words about not missing me if anything bad happened to me! How can you not help somebody that's sick with a fever, thinking they can do it all by themselves? I was so weak, all I could do was lie down and sleep. I'm glad I killed her when I had the motivation to do so."

"She treated you with unkindness, so she died an unkind death as a result of her actions against you. It's a harsh example of what goes around, comes around."

"You know one phrase I heard that I hate that has its roots in religion?"

"Enlighten me."

"_'The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away'_, meaning all that God gives, he will take back. I hate it because it's untrue. Most people don't lose what they never had to begin with. Some people give what they have willingly, while others take whatever they want without any consequence. And some take from those that have nothing to give, which is as cruel as cruel people can be."

Mako placed his exposed hand on his brother's shoulder and showed him sympathy; it was true, what he had said, that people would and could take from those that had nothing to give, which made them exceedingly cruel to others. If anything, he knew his younger twin, his little brother, had nothing but a heart full of life and innocence, and their former family ties took the innocence and left only bitterness and hatred. Of course, he couldn't help but feel that such a choice had been decided upon by their former parents shortly after his own murder. So he couldn't tolerate how people, especially families, could be cold to people that did nothing wrong…or little things that were wrong to deserve such contempt thrown to them.

Rumble! The ground began to rattle a little, catching the attention of the twins.

"What in the…" Death questioned, and then saw a giant behemoth rise from around the buildings from afar. "Oh, great!"

The behemoth was red as blood and looked like it had four eyes. It was facing the Angel, which was bad for Death; he was tasked with keeping Sachiel protected from harm until all eight points were chosen, and that was what he was going to do.

-x-

"…Once burned, twice shy," went Ritsuko, awaiting this day that they could go against the Angels a second time.

Misato wasn't so sure that this was even right; to go after an Angel after being warned by Death, the former Shinji Ikari, not to attempt such an act after being told they were off-limits. But the order came from the new commander, who got his orders from the Committee. And with Unit-03 reserved as a backup in case Unit-02 couldn't deal with the Angel, NERV was as prepared as possible to take back the city.

"Commence the attack," the commander instructed.

When she heard the order, Asuka willed Unit-02 to charge toward the Angel, armed with a Smash Hawk axe. She was going to waste the Angels, regardless of what the late Third Child said to Misato the last time she encountered him.

"Die, you monster!" She shouted, and raised the axe against the Angel.

The Angel responded by raising its AT-Field to defend, but felt like it was reduced to a thin wall of air, useless against the mockery of his predecessor.

SLASH! The red Eva injured the Angel's left arm, spilling its bluish-purple fluids.

"Iiiiiiiiieee!" The Angel shrieked, backing away from the Eva.

"Ha-ha-ha!" Asuka laughed.

"STOP!" She heard someone shout out, and saw something atop a nearby building. "You continue to assault the Angel I was tasked to protect, and you'll pay with your life!"

Asuka had finally gotten an audience with the dead boy, wielding a sickle; she had assumed with his death and return, he had lost all his firearms and gained a replacement weapon. She wasn't all that surprised to see him wearing regular clothes like the ones she'd seen the pictures of him after his remains were collected and disposed of, but the sight of his accompanying horse that looked like a unicorn was unsettling enough; it seemed like something ripped from old fairy tales.

"So, you're the Third Child, brought back to life?" She questioned, using Unit-02's loudspeakers to respond to his verbal threat. "You're not all that impressive to look at."

"Who's trying to impress who? And no one is supposed to be in this city so long as it's required for the cause it has become chosen for. Leave the city, leave the Angel, and do not come back. Otherwise, I will use deadly force upon your flesh." Death warned her.

"Sorry, kid, but I got orders to waste the Angel and take back the city," she informed him, "and that's something I gotta do."

"Then you have sealed your fate."

Then, beyond what was considered normal, the horse of Death jumped off the rooftop and hovered through the air, leaping over the street to the next rooftop, heading towards the red Evangelion.

Asuka had no time to lose, and reached out with her left hand to swat the horse and its rider.

Death raised his sickle up and swung with greater force than he had ever unleashed upon the mortals he had sent to Hell.

SLICE! The blade had left a nick in Unit-02's hand, spilling out some of its bluish-purple blood.

"Whoa!" Asuka gasped, pulling her arm back, and then using the other arm to swat the boy and his horse away, sending them hitting the street.

Thud. They had impacted the ground with less force than what she had expected of them. But what she didn't expect to see…was the two get back up like nothing happened; the boy didn't even have a scrape or bruise on him to show that he had been assaulted.

"Asuka, forget about him," went Ritsuko. "He's just a bug. Get the Angel while it's still down."

In Central Dogma, on every available monitor and screen, the Angel had already begun healing its injury. If it recovered completely, it would most likely improve upon its physical design and make itself impervious to future injuries.

"Send out Unit-03," the commander ordered.

Back on the surface of Tokyo-3, Unit-02 raised its left foot, which had now sported a bloody gash on the bottom where Death slashed it, and brought it down on the unicorn-like horse, along with Death, burying them beneath several tons of brutal war machine. And at that moment, another behemoth arose from the streets; this was the pitch-black Eva that was Unit-03, armed with a Smash Hawk axe of its own, facing the Angel.

"Attack, Mana," Misato ordered, although with some hesitation, and the Fourth Child carried out the order without question.

"Hyah!" She shouted, raising the axe and bringing it down on the Angel's bony face.

"Iiiiiieee!" Sachiel shrieked once more, now sporting a cracked face as it fell to the ground.

Beneath Unit-02's foot, Death, still in one piece, was out cold.

"Ugh…" He groaned.

FLASH! He saw things that didn't make sense to him, right then and there. He saw his dead father looking down upon him with a purple version of the behemoth that just buried him, then, sometime later, he saw himself looking over the city from a hill with the purple-haired woman that shot him in an attempt to kill him during a sunset. Another vision was of him and his worthless father in front of a grave that served as nothing more than an artifice for his absentee mother…where the bastard told him to stop seeking him out (like he had ever tried to in his past), unwilling to even say one kind thing to him, just like he never did before he killed him. Another vision showed Death's mortal incarnation being, in one of the worse of scenarios, exploited by people by being inside one of the behemoths (the purple one, no doubt), and ganged up upon by nine, white creatures that were the same as the purple and red ones, but had wings and could fly. The next thing he saw was enough to make him wish he had killed his mother before he let himself fall to the Grim Reaper he had battled with for more time to get revenge on his father: He saw himself, alive once again, but without any recollection of what had happened in the past, in a world that was just as manipulated as he had been, showing the remnants of the behemoths standing around in crucified states.

If he had been conscious, he would've been balding his fists, wanting to beat the life out of his mother and anyone else that he might've wanted to punish for what he went through. He had to get out of this predicament he was now in.

"It's one of the darkest of sins," a female voice uttered out, "to be exploited by the ones that don't do their own work. A darker sin…to abandon the ones you claim to love…but do nothing to prove it."

Death soon found himself in the same cemetery that he had visited when he found the grave marker that possessed his former identity engraved upon it, but it was filled with mist and a layer of dampness. In front of him, amidst the forest of tombstones, was a woman that, like the previous visions he had, looked like Rumi, only older, dressed in silver armor, like a samurai, but with an organic theme to it, like his vision of the little girl with her gold armor.

Death felt like he should've brandished his sickle, but this woman didn't make herself a threat to himself, just like how Rumi hadn't made herself a threat toward him.

"Of course, you would know only of being abandoned…and never being loved by the ones that abandoned you," she told him.

"You're Rumi's mother," he responded, addressing her by her status; he didn't know her name.

"Yes…and no," she said. "I'm a shade, a small part of the woman whose appearance I possess."

"You… The woman you resemble…was a kind and caring person in another life, in another world."

"As well as a martial arts master, a town leader, a master of the elements, among other things."

"I know the girl was called Rumi, but I don't know who you are. I mean, who you're supposed to be in the other lifetime."

"I was called Akira, in a few other lifetimes…and a few other dimensions," she revealed to him.

"Akira… Why am I here right now, talking to you?" He asked her.

"You were stepped on…and you lost consciousness," she answered him. "Massive trauma to your brain, you conscious mind, resulting in your incapacitation. To think that Death could take that type of punishment from a cheap imitation of a creature charged by a higher authority to bestow life across the farthest reaches of the universe. And to think that Death would be a young man that people tried to own, control and then cast aside like garbage. It's the same in every case, the same situation that befalls your mortal self in nearly every life."

"My mortal self…suffers the same fate…in nearly every life that he lived? How many times? How many lives exploited for the wrong reasons?"

"Many. Barely a few of those lives end on happy notes, others end before they even have your alternate selves living to the age of fourteen. One of your alternate selves was made to take his own life after being convinced that he was unloved…while another gave up on life and let himself be murdered at the age you were when you died."

"And what of those visions I had just now? Where it seemed like I lived, but without any memory of anything that happened?"

"The woman that left you when you were alive…and never came back, even when your life was in danger by everything and everyone that tried to exploit you… She used you with her absence, and she never once came back. She stayed in her creation in some lifetimes as a would-be testament of mankind's existence. But that was cruel of her, saying that she loved you, that she wanted to give you a bright future, but, in most cases, all she ever gave you was what you're a constant understander of, something that has followed you in many cases. In that glimpse of another universe, everyone was forced to pay the ultimate price, and they lost what they held most dear."

Death turned his head away as he frowned in his rage. It seemed like no matter what he did, where he went, alive or dead, fragment, shades or memories of his pathetic life were trying to get him to go down the other way, which was close enough to make him scream in agony before he went after someone that deserved the ultimate fate they would be dealt with.

"But when you die before they can use you completely, nothing goes the way they want it to," Akira told him, and he looked back at her. "And…your death changes everything, throwing off everyone's agenda. Everyone except for Mother Gaia, who wants to do right by the world, but understands that there will be further tragedy before salvation comes. She respects every lost soul in existence, and wants them all to live again, but needs the Four Horsemen of the Restorative and the Angels to do the impossible. A future where everyone is made to lose their life isn't desired, and a future where the planet left crippled by the arrogance and greed of people that want what they can't have without sacrificing what's left of their moral decency, made whole and full of life and hope again…is a future that is worth fighting for."

"I'm all for that, but I'm only doing what I'm doing for my reward at the end. I no longer want to be associated in any way to the name Ikari, or anyone of science, politics, abusers, child abandoning cretins and megalomaniacs with god complexes or pathetic beliefs. Because, contrary to the old belief, appearances are deceiving, even for one that is dead. I'm not back as a horseman because my death set me free. I'm back because, despite dying, I am not free of all my bindings. And Hell isn't all people want to believe it is; there's no fire and brimstone, only darkness, with very little light, like you're in an empty dream or a small room with no furniture. My soul can't wander, it can't go beyond the barriers that were grounded in the flesh. I do this for Mother Gaia, my brother and I will be rewarded with a clean slate."

"Yeah, the two you definitely need a fresh start, deprived of the pain you've had to carry in the past."

"I'm a killer, and I won't deny that part of my existence. As much as I want to let go of that side of me, I will use the methods I've become accustomed to using against others until all eight points on the planet are chosen by the Angels and the day comes where the planet can finally heal."

"Yet, you're not proud of what you do."

"There was never any pride in murder. Murder… It just came to me as the only solution to a childhood without love from the people I was left in the careless care of. I couldn't believe I was left with relatives that treated me like a waste of space. I just wanted to let go of my heart after the put-downs I got from everyone, but I couldn't forget that there was one man that needed to be punished for his abandoning of me. I've made my peace with the past, now I just need a new future, one where I'm in control of my choices and no one's out to get me."

Akira nodded her head in agreement; she was understanding of why he was doing all this and his reasons for continuing to perform acts that were in defiance of the laws of people and nature themselves until he could stop.

Suddenly, the mist began to thicken around the two and enshroud the armored woman.

"It seems," she sighed, "that every time something like this happens, a conversation between two strangers from different worlds, we only have a few minutes to speak. I will say this to you, Death of the Restorative: Good luck…and I hope you do succeed in your new cause."

Then, without so much as a warning, Death fell backwards and felt like he was falling. He felt like he was falling down a dark pit, with only the sound of air around him.

"…Death…Death…" A voice called out to him.

"…Death…wake up…" Additional voices called out.

"…Wake up, brother…" He heard Mako's voice say to him, and he opened his eyes, seeing two of his fellow horsemen, Conquest and War, and his twin looking down at him.

He rose up and looked around, seeing that he was atop a building in a city, and saw the Angel, Sachiel, sporting a new face and healed injuries.

"What happened?" He asked them.

"You were out cold for two hours," went Conquest. "You were stepped on by one of the mockeries bearing Adam's flesh. Mother Gaia then had War and I come to aid you and drive the behemoths away."

"I'm actually glad I came," added War, sounding…rather cheerful. "I met my battle crush."

"Huh?" Death responded.

"He means that he saw a girl come out of the red behemoth and he became attracted to both her looks and her violent aura." Mako explained.

Death looked away from where the Angel stood and at the moderate damage done to a few buildings; he had clearly missed something that went down between the horsemen and the behemoths.

"Tell me all that happened," he told them.

"Well, that's not much to tell," went Conquest.

"I have an eternity to waste hearing the details," he assured the Poison Master.

"Well… It was after you were stepped on," he started.

-x-

_Rescuing Death_

Mother Gaia felt the incapacitation of Death and sent a telepathic alert to the Horsemen of Conquest and War to go to Tokyo-3 to aid and protect Death and the Angel, by whatever means required, but not to lose the city.

The moment they received the alert, the white-robed archer and the ancient knight took their horses and rode through the streets of New York and Hong Kong and disappeared, reappearing in the streets of Tokyo-3, seeing the Evangelions that were trying to take back the city.

"Oh!" War shouted, and brandished his sword, already ablaze as he he charged toward the red Eva. "Feel the relentless wrath of War, the Violent One!"

SLASH! He ran past the Eva's left leg, cutting through the armor and artificial flesh underneath, spilling its synthetic blood out as it lost sensation.

"Aaaahh!" Asuka screamed, feeling like her own leg had been cut off her.

Unit-02 fell to the ground and saw the rider of the red courser go past her.

SWAT! Conquest fired an arrow toward Unit-03's head, hitting it in the jaw and sending a jolt of discomfort to the twelve-year-old girl inside the dark giant.

"Ah!" Mana gasped, feeling like one of her teeth was knocked loose.

Conquest saw that there was a little girl inside Unit-03, but found it unlikely that he could pass judgment upon her on Death's territory. But so long as Death was out of it right now, he saw no harm in spreading a little case of the common cold; with the additional designation as the Horseman of Pestilence, he had the ability to spread every type of sickness that ever existed on the planet, ranging from allergies to diseases that were untreatable unless removed by him. It was what he liked about his status as a Horseman of the Restorative: He could curse people with illness…and he could take the illness away, just like that.

"Time to spread a little sickness!" He yelled, and fired another arrow at the black Eva.

"Hey, I don't even know you!" The girl shouted at him.

"This city needs to be empty and the Angel unharmed," he responded, arming his bow with another arrow, "and your ally attacked one of ours. You mess with one Horseman of the Restorative, then you mess with all Four Horsemen of the Restorative. I don't believe in solving situations like these with senseless violence and bloodshed. We get enough of that through War and Death. But if it becomes necessary, I will use deadly force to enforce the will of the Earth, which is in intense pain from the maiming it received long ago."

Then, just as Unit-02 struggled to get up with just one leg, War turned around and used his sword again, going up the Eva's back and jamming the blade into its lower back, sending three streaks of flame upward towards its head.

"Aaaaaurgh!" Asuka screamed, feeling like somebody poured boiling water onto her back. "Damn you! Damn you!"

She tried to reach for the horseman, but he dodged her and ran toward her partially-burnt head.

"If this soul feels the damage done to her behemoth, then what do you think might happen if it was decapitated by my sword?" He questioned, stopping at the top of Unit-02's head, his sword raised high.

"War, stop!" Conquest yelled.

"Please, don't!" Mana pleaded.

But War wasn't having any of it; he was going to behead this giant, just to show that the four of them meant serious business against any that stood in the way.

"Oh, no!" Misato gasped. "Quick! Disable her nerve connections!"

War brought his sword down, but then his horse head-butted him and sent him falling over the head.

"Aaaaahh!" He screamed, hitting the street with his head. "Mmmm!"

With her nervous system no longer tied to the Eva, Asuka felt relieved of pain, and self-ejected the Entry Plug from the Eva.

"Who does that…that thing think it is?!" She asked, climbing out of the plug and going down her damaged Evangelion. "What the Hell do you think you are?!"

War got up, showing some viscosity of sort on the right side of his lower lip, dripping onto the ground near his fallen weapon, and looked up at Asuka as she climbed down her Eva. He had never seen anyone, not even during his eternity in the depths of the afterlife where he couldn't move on, that was dressed in red before like this girl. It was…almost like a sign that was meant for him.

"Whoa," he whispered.

PUNCH! Asuka got close enough to punch War in his face, bypassing his helmet and hitting the flesh.

"Mmph!" He grunted, falling backwards onto the ground.

Unit-03 then turned to look back at the Angel, but found that it disappeared from sight. In the whole distraction, it had the opportunity to regenerate its injuries and get away.

In addition, Conquest had gone over to the spot where Death had been stepped on and picked him up from the ground and set him on his mare's saddle.

"You can still survive this, ladies," he told them. "Just walk away."

Personally, Mana was willing to accept this offer to walk away, but she suspected that Ms. Soryu, being stubborn in her own way, wouldn't accept the offer.

"I never surrender!" Asuka told Conquest.

As the Horseman of Conquest and Pestilence armed himself with another arrow, preparing to give this girl a sickness that matched her unwillingness to turn away, the Horseman of War got back up and removed his helmet, revealing the rest of the face he possessed from his previous life.

War had a battle-scarred visage: Three slanted cuts on the right cheek, a single cut on his left cheek, bluish-gray eyes, dark hair that reached down to his neck, and a small chain attached to his left ear.

"Are you the type of girl that people speak of?" He asked Asuka. "Are you the type of girl that likes violence above all else in the world?"

"Huh?" Asuka and Conquest both uttered, confused.

"You…you spark my streak of bloodshed," War told her. "Especially that blazing head of hair of yours. I want to set you ablaze and watch you fight to survive."

"War, now's not the time for personal conversations," Conquest told him, really not wanting to go anywhere that was into the pursuit of relationships that could've interfered with their goal.

"No way, Poison Master," War retorted, raising his sword up. "I want to fight this girl. War desires conflict with a burning beauty."

Conquest recalled Mother Gaia warning him about War's arousal to anyone that demonstrated a type of love for battle that matched his; it was something he grew up with when he was alive, but it was also what led to his death. He had to keep this from getting out of hands.

"Hey, new girl!" Asuka shouted up at Unit-03. "Your Eva still works! Crush these jerks!"

"I…I…I…" Mana was hesitant on actually going and attacking someone that was giving them the chance to turn away while the option was still available. "My orders were to deal with the Angel, not these men. We should take the offer to leave."

"No way, Mana Asagi!" She heard Ritsuko through the intercom system. "They still have the boy that should be dead! Flatten him! Crush him! Reduce him to pulp!"

STOMP! Mana looked away from the horsemen and Asuka, and toward the opposite side of the street that the Angel had been on, seeing it from afar. It looked like it had a score to settle with her, judging from the way it looked at her Eva.

With its new face, Sachiel's eyes flared up, looking like they could unleash a beam of light at the black Eva, but it refrained from doing so, like it was waiting for Unit-03 to make the first move.

"Sachiel's enraged that you attacked him the way you did," she heard Conquest yell at her, "but, like me, he's showing you a measure of clemency! We don't want any more trouble! This is simply something we need to do!"

Mana looked back down at the horsemen and Asuka, even taking another look at the one that people either addressed as the horseman Death or the late Shinji Ikari, seeing how helpless and vulnerable he appeared right now after being stepped on. You couldn't even tell if he was actually dead, probably not unless you touched him and checked for a pulse, which she wouldn't risk her life trying to do. Plus, she wasn't feeling too well right now.

_Oh, Mother,_ she thought, _what do I do? Do I listen to my superiors…or do I listen to these horsemen?_

In Central Dogma, the new commander evaluated the situation on the monitor: The Angel was waiting for its right to fire upon the Eva that could still function, Unit-02 had been damaged and the pilot left vulnerable to any potential danger she was in, these horsemen giving the girls an opportunity to turn away, but Ritsuko Akagi seemed Hell-bent on wanting the late Shinji Ikari dealt with while he was out cold from getting stepped on.

Fuyutsuki, on the other hand, paid more attention to the horseman that called himself Death, wondering if he was really dead…or just out cold. And now that he had seen two more horsemen, he was convinced that there were only four of them, meaning there were Four Horsemen of the Restorative, a literal opposite to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

"Call off the attack," the new commander ordered.

"Sir?" Hyuga asked him.

"Bring the Evas back to base…now," he told them.

"But, sir…" Ritsuko tried to implore him.

"Now," he cut her off, not wanting to hear her out now.

That was all Misato needed to hear.

"Mana, bring back Asuka and Unit-02," she ordered the Fourth Child.

"Yes, Captain," Mana responded, and backed away, and saw the Angel's eyes dim down. "Miss Soryu, this battle's lost. Live today, live to fight another day."

"Verdammt!" Asuka cursed in German; she really wanted to try her luck with beating War to a pulp. "This isn't over, dummkopf."

"Sorry," War told her, "but my German is rusty, so's my Japanese. Try basic hand gestures."

Asuka then pounded her left fist into her right one, making sure he got the message.

"Now, that just makes me want to fight you with more ferocity," he said, further impressed by her.

Unit-03 picked up the damaged Unit-02 and went back into the ground; Asuka, unfortunately, had to go back to the Geo-Front the long way due to the dangers of going down the Eva way outside the Eva.

-x-

"…And when they left, Sachiel retook his position and began the process of regenerating until he's fully healed," Conquest finished the story.

Death sighed soon after; it would be a while before he got over being incapacitated, and got up off the rooftop. He'd been laid low by something his former mother had aided in creating, and he desired retribution for the minor failure he obtained. As the Horseman of Death, he was afforded more than just this priority of the Restorative to undo the maiming that was caused over fifteen years ago; he was afforded the power to defy fate even further, and he was going to defy it further until the primary objective was achieved.

"They clearly don't get that this city is no longer theirs," Death told them.

"Don't worry about them for now," Conquest told him. "They won't be coming back for a while. I put my abilities as the Poison Master to work. When I fired my last arrow at the black behemoth, I gave the girl inside a non-lethal contagion that will spread to the rest of the world down below."

"Oh, really?" War asked him, not knowing of this until just now. "And what non-lethal contagion did you give the girl?"

He and Death looked at Conquest, who then removed his hood and revealed his scarred face so they knew what he had done with some better clarity.

"Gave her the common cold," he answered, "but this variation won't be easy to treat. I reckon they'll have high fevers and running noses for a few weeks. Three, at the most."

"Running noses? Why didn't you just give them diseases that killed them?" War questioned.

"This is Death's territory," he defended his reason. "Plus, this was to warn the people that, if we want to, we can cause them great agony that won't end unless we say it ends. If I were to give a woman terminal-stage lung cancer, she wouldn't know relief until she either died…or I relieved her of the illness. It'd be no different from you threatening to cause the burning end of your would-be victims or Death dealing in death to the people that probably deserve it."

Death then unsheathed his sickle, which he was fortunate enough to still possess, assuming that the weapon was linked to him, able to disappear when not in use, and come to him when he desired it. Unlike his clothes, the weapon still looked like new, right down to the glistening blade. He then asked his fellow horsemen if they were going to make sure that their cities were deprived of human life until the next cities they would be assigned to protect came.

FLASH! The three became paralyzed by the perception of two different cities. One city had a tower that looked like it had a flattened ball near its center and a lake nearby. The other had several pyramids of stone and some water scarcity with most of the people living closer to the river that had water obtainable. The Angel that traveled to the former city looked like the one that came to Tokyo-3, but lacked any bony features, seeming streamlined, while the Angel that traveled to the latter city was massive and disturbingly floating around like a piece of paper in the air, with a large eye and large hands with eyes in them.

The vision ended and the horsemen were returned to the rooftop.

"Whoa," went War.

"Looks like we got double the work, War," Conquest said.

"Huh?"

"You get the city Israfel's going to, while I get the one Sahaquiel's aiming toward."

"Why you get the one with the stone structures?"

"Because the people that get the most water in a vast wasteland are the victors of a small conquest, worthy of suffering a plague for their consumption. Water, in such places, is more precious than any amount of gold or silver or jewels. Also, as I am known as the Horseman of Pestilence in most interpretations, I can resurrect the famous plagues that they were forced to deal with."

As Conquest got back on his stallion, War's courser nudged the Violent One in his left shoulder, and he conceded to acquire the other city. The two then left Death alone to hasten the Restorative's cause.

"This has not been a good day," Death turned to face Mako, who floated beside him.

"Yeah," he responded. "But then again, there's no such thing as a good day. Just a day, nothing more."

"Days where nothing, expected or unexpected, happens."

"Days where nothing that needs to happen ever does."

"Days where there comes a time where anything you do in the hours that pass you by…"

"Could be the last that you ever do of them."

-x-

Toronto, Canada's greatest city in terms of population and size. Almost a metropolis like other large cities scattered throughout the world, but today was a different case for it. Today, unlike the previous ones before it, Toronto was to become one of the chosen points for the Angels and the Restorative. It was being approached, from miles away, by the Angel of Music, Israfel, who had decided that it would serve as its domain.

"Oh, my God!" A man shouted, looking up at the Angel.

"Aaaaahh!" A woman screamed, and then picked up her daughter and ran.

"It's another one of those giant monsters!" Another woman screamed.

As Israfel made it to the city and began its approach toward the CN Tower, the Restorative Horseman of War quietly road in on his courser; the plan was like New York: Let the Angel show up, scare out as many people as possible, then make himself known and clear out the remaining mortals that chose to stay and hide.

NEIGH! His courser neighed, rearing up and going down the street.

-x-

People of the land of sand were running like crazy in all directions. Small explosions rattled the uninhabited plains outside of Cairo as the Eighth Angel, Sahaquiel, broke through the upper atmosphere, dropping pieces of its mass in an attempt to frighten away the people, the descendants of the primordial spawn of Lilith. It spread its amoeba-like arms out as it to darken the skies, blocking the sunlight, leaving an artificial darkness over the lands of Cairo, Egypt.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM, BOOM, BOOM! It dropped smaller pieces of its mass into the Nile, causing small tsunamis that, while washing onto the streets and flooding them up to three feet, receded back into the river.

As the people ran for dear life, some of them saw, up atop one of their modern-day buildings, a figure on a white horse, wielding a bow.

"People of Cairo," the Poison Master announced, "I am Conquest, the Poison Master, a Horseman of the Restorative, and your city has become a part of the cause I serve to see fulfilled! It is now my domain and the domain of Sahaquiel, Angel of the Sky! Leave now, and you will know mercy, stay…and you will experience the consequences of your actions! I will unleash upon you the Plague of Pestilence…and your souls shall belong to me!"

The people took no time to question if this man was some sort of madman or lunatic, not when he fired an arrow into the air and it self-destructed like a firecracker, into the shape of the poison symbol, black and gray and everything. They ran out of their city with a fright that could match the power that a former slave used to part the Red Sea for others to cross to safety.

Conquest looked up at Sahaquiel and wondered if this massive servant of the Heavens he had never been to could understand the fear they ignited in the hearts of the lesser people. He himself might've been a former member of the human race from long ago, but there was resentment in his past, enough resentment to trigger an outbreak of an infectious plague that targeted only those with malicious intent. Almost like Death, and just like War, Conquest was a victim of his past, but not like those that suffer from the unfairness of violence, retribution or some other form of suffering related to them; he had been a devastating weight upon his mother just because of how she got him. This was a hatred he could pin with arrows to the man that was his father.

_I help the Restorative succeed in the end, every will benefit from the results,_ he thought. _I help the Restorative succeed in this…and I can absolve myself of any of the darkness I got from that bastard. I'll be able to free her from the curse that was the unholy union between them._

BANG! He felt an impact in his back and out his stomach, and then turned around, seeing a policeman with a gun in hand.

"Don't move!" The cop ordered him. "You're under arrest!"

SWAT! Conquest shot him in the chest with an arrow and watched him fall to the ground, shaking and groaning in immense pain.

"You're going to suffer quickly," he told the cop, looking down at his face as his skin began to shrivel up. "All the fluids inside your organs is drying up. You're now as dry as… Well, as dry as your limited imagination is. For whatever it's worth… I am sorry you had to die for not leaving."

The man was then reduced to dried-up husk in civilian police clothes. This made Conquest sigh as he walked away from the latest member of the dead. He looked out at the people that were still running away, hoping he wouldn't see any people that chose to stay and suffer; he hated to induce the suffering of those that didn't need to pay the price. Though, he'd probably do what Death had done, and go looking for those that inflict cruelty on the innocent and make them pay with their lives.

-x-

"…I don't believe this! Achoo!" Misato had responded to what Ritsuko had revealed. "Two cities at the same time?!"

"Achoo!" Ritsuko sneezed. "This was completely unexpected. Along with all of the base coming down with a cold! Those horsemen are probably responsible for this!"

When Mana had brought Unit-03 and Unit-02 back, she had come out of the plug looking a little under the weather, and less than an hour later, came down with a high fever that spread to the rest of NERV HQ. No one had seen it coming, not even Ritsuko, who wished she had (along with wanting to blame Death for this illness), and when Asuka returned and caught the cold, she wanted to blame Mana for not attacking the horsemen.

Kaji wasn't even the least concerned about having caught a cold, as it reminded him of the hundreds of thousands of people that died from diseases far more devastating than such a minor ailment. But if there was any one person that wasn't impressed by what the horsemen did, it was the new commander. The only person yet to show any signs of sickness was Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki himself; he was the oldest person there, and he hadn't broken down with a running nose, high fever or anything yet.

"The Committee is not going to like this," the new commander expressed, taking a tissue from a box of tissues and blowing his nose. "They're going to demand answers, and if they spit, the saliva's coming out of my mouth."

"They're the ones that demanded the Evas attack the Angel in an attempt to take back the Tokyo-3 city," went Kaji, blowing his nose. "Nobody anticipated there would be assaults from the horsemen. Achoo!"

"And now, everyone's sick," Fuyutsuki sighed.

"Everyone but you," the new commander corrected him. "Now, why is that?"

"I don't believe the Sub-Commander had anything to do with this," Kaji defended the elder. "He probably has a higher immune system, and absolutely nothing to do with his limited association with Death when he was alive."

"Oh, yes. Achoo! The day the Third Child came to get revenge on the former commander, which was also the same day that the Sub-Commander met him at his home…and brought him here to exact his revenge, costing the lives of the personnel that died by his hands. The Committee wanted to hold you responsible for the deaths of Gendo Ikari and the First Child, but took into considerable that you were threatened by the boy and acted only in self-preservation."

Fuyutsuki sighed and responded, "It was never like that. I didn't anticipate for Shinji… I mean… I didn't anticipate for Death to know where to find me. It should've been impossible, but there he was, in my apartment, with my machete, and he left drawings there to show that he knew who I was from when he was a little boy years ago. I knew he hated his father for abandoning him, and wouldn't stop the senseless killing until he dealt with him…so I told him that if he wanted to kill his father, I would take him to see him."

"Achoo! I read the file on Gendo Ikari, and I could tell that he wasn't well liked by the people. Achoo! Honestly, the Committee didn't trust him all that much, like he had his own agenda. NERV's priority, its major concern, its only concern right now…is to deal with the Angels, and we can't even do that without analyzing them for potential weaknesses or getting rid of these horsemen. What's more is that we need the pilots to be able to fight them, and our only two are on bed rest. Achoo!"

"So what do you intend to tell the Committee when they demand an explanation?" Kaji asked.

"That it was a mistake to go after them half-cocked and not expect the warning Death gave Captain Katsuragi to be true. If we're to beat the enemy, we need to know where to find them and put an end to their plans." The new commander answered.

"They've already taken six cities," Fuyutsuki sighed, wondering when and where the remaining two cities would be found and taken by the Angels. "What could they want with them?"

And deep down, the elder felt like he was about to sneeze.

-x-

As Mother Gaia floated in the lake on her island, she had entered a silent conversation with the higher authority that she would frequently speak with. No other mortal could see who or what this higher authority was, but the Four Horsemen could, on account that they were lost souls in mortal purgatory until God-knows-when.

_I didn't think that two Angels would arise and visit two cities in one day,_ her mind spoke out to the unseen force she answered to. _That's six of the eight chosen locales needed for the cause._

_Yes,_ a male voice spoke back to her. _Six out of eight. Until the remaining two are chosen by the Angels, those that desire that which shouldn't be desired…shall be entitled to a season…but only a season to either try and atone for their misguided, cruel or disgraceful deeds…or suffer the consequences when the day that all will be decided comes._

_How long will this season be for them?_ Mother Gaia asked.

_For as long as possible,_ a female voice responded to her. _You needn't worry if you feel they will continue to ravage the lands._

_That's what I fear the most every time,_ she expressed, _and the worst part is that I can't really do anything about it without causing self-inflicted harm to myself. The one thing the deities agree upon more than anything when dealing with matters that concern mortals is that free will shouldn't be manipulated for any reason, for better or for worse._

_No one with free will can be controlled, Mother Gaia,_ the male voice returned. _It is the ultimate blessing men and women possess._

_And yet, there are always those that abuse the blessing, wanting what is most forbidden. What is most forbidden than that of the power and authority of the deities themselves? Immortal, unquestionable, infallible…and all-powerful._

_It is a poisonous desire that shouldn't be achieved by anyone, regardless of their intentions,_ another male voice expressed.

_People that fear death, what lies beyond their own mortality, will do anything to avoid dying and becoming just another memory in the collective of memories carried by others. They don't understand that there's rarely anything to fear after dying,_ Mother Gaia said; she knew this to be a half-truth because those that did die either ascended to the heavens…or fell below the Earth…or they were just as likely, like the lost souls that became the Four Horsemen of the Restorative, to wind up in between the two realms of the blessed and the damned. _It has been this way ever since they were cast out from the Garden of Eden to keep them from eating from the Tree of Life after they were tricked into eating from the Tree of Knowledge. And it'll continue to be this way until they come to accept that nothing is meant to last forever. Nothing mortal, that is._

_And they continue to fail and see that both things and people are more precious to them because they don't last forever,_ another female voice added in.

Then, the conversation ended, and Mother Gaia opened her eyes to the sky above, finding that she had drifted to the edge of the southern side of the lake.

"Hello," she turned to the left and saw Famine, looking down at her.

"Hello, Famine," she greeted back, and got up, her dress dripping with water, clinging to her mortal flesh like a second skin.

"Were you… I mean, were you speaking to anyone out in the lake?" Famine asked her.

"Yes, I was. It will be a while before the next Angel arrives to a given location for you and Death to keep empty until the day everything and everyone maimed is undone. I wasn't told how long it would be until they arrive, but you got some time before then."

"You know, Death was incapacitated because of those behemoths made from the flesh of a harbinger of life stepped on him. I wouldn't be surprised if Death would try to deal in retribution to the one responsible for knocking him out."

"If you, Conquest or War had been stepped on, or blown up, you'd be incapacitated, as well, but you wouldn't die. So long as the Earth, my true self, continues to fight for its right to continue living, like the beliefs of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the Four Horsemen of the Restorative are practically as immortal as the gods themselves are believed to be. Plus, you're all lost souls, you're already dead, so you can't die again."

"I still remember one of the criminals I sucked dry of their fluids shooting me in the head before I killed them, and it hurt when I took a bullet in my mouth. It took me, I don't know, probably two minutes, maybe five minutes, before I revived and exacted retribution on the guy that shot me. But Death was stepped on, and he took longer to revive. Why is that?"

"It's not all that complicated…nor is it all that simple. Death takes longer to revive from massive incapacitation because he's not as close to the mortal coil in his purgatory as you three are. Conquest, War and Famine are different from Death because there is no indication, nowhere in any form of history or religion, that three are like him. Therefore, you three are more closer to life in purgatory than Death could ever be."

"But, surely, Famine is a little close to being dead."

"Close…but still far from it."

-x-

Toronto was reduced to another ghost time where some of the people still tried to cling to their home, only to be driven away or deprived of their lives by the knight with the flaming sword. There was very little to no damage present, except for the minor indents made on the streets by Israfel as it had made its approach toward the CN Tower. Beyond that, the only other damage made was by the people that either ran or tried to shoplift some stores. Any attempt made on Israfel, whether by the lesser mortals or those associated with military might, was made undone by War, such as when a series of fifteen jet fighters made their move on Israfel, unable to get past its AT-Field, and War unleashed fire into the sky.

He stood at the tip of the tower and raised his sword up high, and unleashed a widespread assault of intense flames and made any jets that got close enough suffer the consequences of being engulfed in ever-rising temperatures of fire that matched the fury of Hell itself.

"Fire, the blessing and curse that was given to mankind in the ages long forgotten," said War to himself, directing the widespread flames by swinging his sword that continued to generate more fire. "According to Greek mythology, Prometheus stole fire from the gods and bestowed it upon the people, in essence, granting the people a power that they have used for generations, ever since obtaining it. And with fire came the advancement of technological achievement. You used fire to burn away large patches of forests for farmlands, mold metal into savage weapons, create war and so on, which aided in your success of creating machines that use fire to fly. You started with fire…and now you have all of this: Guns, missiles, explosives, all weapons of mass destruction…and you use them in whatever way you see fit. You abuse power, make it poisonous, a plague that everyone desperate enough wants to catch. And the Four Horsemen… The Four Horsemen are the last resort, here to restore the balance."

He made the flames bigger, almost like the top of a mushroom cloud over the vicinity of the city, reducing all opposition to smoldering bits of metal that fell to the ground.

"I wonder how Conquest is doing with his new new city to vacate of people without much hostility," he wondered about his fellow horseman.

-x-

There were those in Cairo that refused to leave the city…and whenever they were found by Conquest, he dealt with them a serious blow to their health. Rather than outright murder, like with the cop that shot him, he let them live with however much their little lives had, damned with his version of the Plague of Pestilence. If they made the choice to leave, they found that their sickness would lift the instant they got out of the city, but if they stayed, they would simply suffer in agony over their inability to treat their ailments. It was only the animals that were in their homes and on the streets that were unaffected by Conquest's power; in the minds of those smart enough to theorize the possibilities, the Poison Master only had it in for the people, and in most cultures, beliefs and so on, nobody considered an animal as a person.

"GRRRRRAURGH!" Conquest, sitting atop one of Cairo's tallest buildings, looked up at Sahaquiel as he continued to float over the city, almost blocking the sunlight, causing an artificial Plague of Darkness for the city.

"Hopefully, the majority of the population will be wise enough to leave and take back their health and freedom," he told himself, looking down at the few that remained, wandering around like ants, really hoping that they would leave the city. "Hmm? Looks like another one of them has chosen to leave and has regained their health, now needing only to regain their freedom."

If he strained his ears a little, he could hear a young woman say to somebody, "We just need to leave this place. It's not worth dying in, anymore. Let's go."

He smiled at the small victory achieved by choosing to leave; he made that possible in the plague that any that chose to leave would cease to have it, but if they tried to lie about leaving, they would suffer its return until they did leave. He took it so far as to ride around the streets to spread the sickness, to enforce the warning of the harsh fate, and, in addition, he didn't want to see any children suffer because of the stubbornness of their parents or guardians; he believed, as he had in his mortal life, that no child should be made to suffer because of their parents' sins.

Neigh. Conquest leaned back and looked behind himself toward his horse, which sat around, doing nothing other than looking at him.

"Is there ever a time when I need to feed you?" He asked the stallion, who, despite being questioned, said nothing in response to his master.

-x-

"…Our plans continue to diverge from the original scenario," SEELE 06 informed the other monoliths in their secret meeting.

"The Angels have taken Cairo, Egypt and Toronto, Canada," SEELE 13 expressed, "and the military powers that be were unable to take them back. Anyone that tried were either burned to death or died from a plague that can't be treated by medicinal means."

"Yet, the Angels have done nothing other than take up residence in each city visited," added SEELE 02.

"Whoever these Four Horsemen of the Restorative are, they possess powers beyond anything we've ever encountered," went SEELE 08. "The Angels arrive to a city, frighten away the majority of the population, and these men arrive soon after to clear out the ones left that refuse to leave, either through persuasion or murder."

"And the former Third Child is the one they call Death," said SEELE 11. "Nowhere is it written in the Dead Sea Scrolls that there are Four Horsemen in league with the Angels. Nowhere is it written that the Angels would arrive and do little to nothing. They are supposed to arrive, attack Tokyo-3, ignoring other cities, and be dealt with by the Evas. None of that has happened, and everything got out of hand after the Third Child was released and Ikari failed to capture him."

"And now NERV has become burdened with a damaged Evangelion and sick personnel, all caused by a man in white robes and a man dressed like a knight with a flaming sword." SEELE 01, also known as Kiel Lorenz, expressed, very disappointed, like the rest of the council, at the would-be incompetence that was being demonstrated by NERV and others that tried to stand up to the Four Horsemen and get dealt with in return for trying.

Most of the SEELE council had to consider that, with the Four Horsemen involved in their affairs, they were facing a major threat that had, potentially, biblical proportions, and many of them lost their faith and respect in any form of religion. And yet, they hadn't seen or heard of anything else that could've related to anything revolving around the horsemen; there was no reports of rivers or seas boiling, volcanic eruptions, water turning into blood, or the dead rising from the grave (unless you made the former Shinji Ikari the only exception to that possibility). They needed to find a way to deal with these men and whoever employed them before the Angels came to claim two more cities from the world, based on the information they received from Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki, who had gotten this from a source outside of NERV. And they needed a way to defeat them all…before they themselves were dealt with for trying to carry out their goal.

"We'll have to speak with Ikari's wife again," Kiel expressed, wondering if the very woman that created both the Evas and the killer child that got revenge on Gendo, along with killing the First Child, could come up with a plan to remedy their situation.

-x-

It seemed this former patch of civilization mirrored his own status, as it had been destroyed and what was left of it left to decompose. This was the ravaged remains of the once great city that was Tokyo, being visited by Death, who could smell the traces of decayed, organic matter that was buried beneath the debris. He could even feel the fragments of bone beneath his feet. The only difference, however, was that he, who was dead person, couldn't decay. As he had nothing else to do until he became aware of Sachiel's endangerment by NERV or some other pathetic group that thought they could take back the pathetic city or kill an Angel, he decided to look at the other parts of the awful archipelago he never had a chance to know about until after he drew his final breath, along with finding out what he could from his twin.

"And this was once Japan's capital?" Death questioned, as his brother floated beside him as he walked over to ravaged site of the long-gone Tokyo Tower. "It's no different from a large, forgotten cemetery: Lifeless and a waste of space."

"And then people had to go and condemn it, along with all the lives that were in it, to the afterlife," went Mako, hovering down to the lifeless concrete and soil. "And for what? For what? For godhood? For power? They went to extremes to when they committed massive homicide, trying to commit genocide years later. This needs to be kept from ever being achieved."

The brothers both touched the ground with their right hands and didn't feel any trace of life in it, not even so much as a meager piece of weed. The whole place was just a dead zone.

NEIGH! Death heard his horse from several feet away, around a corner in the ravaged neighborhood they had wandered into, and ran to see what was wrong. NEIGH!

Running around the remains of a building that was adequate enough to cover a potential crime, Death saw his horse being assaulted by some people with ropes and restraints, dressed in casual uniforms.

"How much do you think we can get off this creature if we sell it?" A man asked a woman, as he wrapped a lasso around Rumi's neck.

"If we sold it to the right buyer, a fortune," the woman answered, and then took a cattle prod to Rumi's left side. "If we gave it to NERV, they'd probably go to extremes to find out if it is a unicorn like from the fairy tales."

NEIGH! Rumi shrieked and reared up, unable to get away.

Death then made his presence known. He counted ten men and two women, and had an immediate dislike of them for harming his horse.

"Hey!" He shouted, and they looked at him. "Take your guilty hands off my horse!"

"Huh?" A man in a shirt with a camouflage theme responded, looking at him. "Ain't he that dead kid that murdered all those people before killing his old man?"

Death manifested his sickle and was ready to deal in his wrath the moment any of them either refused to unhand his mare…or addressed him by his former name.

"I won't hesitate to send you to Hell," he threatened them; after he'd been informed that the Restorative Horsemen were to take it easy for the time being until the next Angel arrived to invade a city, he really wanted to explore the boundaries of this pathetic patch of land that had summer weather all year long, but he wasn't intending to go after people unless he had a reason to. "Release her now!"

"I thought Shinji Ikari was one of those mute kids," the second woman, wearing green jogging clothes, expressed the moment she heard his warning.

SWIFT! Death ran past her, swung his sickle, and carved into her clothes and flesh.

"Aaaurgh!" The woman gasped, and blood sprayed from her waist in all directions.

When she fell, the first woman and the men became terrified; they didn't think a young teen that should've been dead would move like lightning and cut a grown woman in half! They saw Death raise his sickle up, now dripping with blood.

"She shouldn't have said that name," he told them, now looking at the rest of them. "Anyone else want to address me by a name I don't answer to?"

BANG! One of the men, armed with a shotgun, fired at Death…and made a bloody gash in his abdomen, soiling his shirt on both front and back. Unfortunately, the blast was unable to knock him down, only making him stagger three feet backwards.

"Alright," he told them, and his sickle's shaft elongated until its bottom reached to above his knees, "now you're all gonna die!"

SLASH, SLASH, SLASH! He swung his weapon around at the nearest men, cutting through cloth, flesh and bone, hearing nothing but the sound of his own grunts.

"Aaaurgh!" Two of the men screamed, feeling their backs and arms get cut as they tried to get away.

"Quick!" The woman shouted to one of the other men. "Shoot him! Shoot him!"

As they took out their guns, Death swung his sickle horizontally and beheaded them. All four of them. Their bodies fell to the ground…and their heads fell to join them in five seconds, afterward.

"Oh, God!" One of the two injured men gasped. "The Hell with this horse! I'm gone!"

He ran, but Death wasn't having any of that; he'd been shot too many times after coming back as a Horseman of the Restorative, and it was time to end those that dared to raise a gun at him.

"Grrr!" He got angrier, and felt his insides boil.

Suddenly…both his sickle…and his eyes shot out tentacle-like streams of energy, grabbing things at random and grabbing the remaining mortals that tried to capture Rumi.

"Aaaaahh!" They all screamed.

Death then heard nothing for a full minute, and saw only darkness. It wasn't like that time he lost consciousness when he was stepped on; he still felt aware of standing around, but he couldn't make sense of what was happening. Moments, or what felt like moments, later, he saw…himself, submerged in that orange liquid that stunk of blood he saw when he murdered Gendo and discovered his twin.

"The mind and soul have abandoned the flesh they won't let move on," his doppelganger expressed, sounding…almost desperate in his tone. "Flesh without a will to animate it, understands only agony. A will without flesh…cannot truly live. The flesh is weak, seeking release, but they won't let it die. The will is strong, but does not seek what they desire for it to do. Please…the flesh is weak, seeking release…but they won't let it die!"

The next thing Death knew, he stood in front of the twelve mortals that tried to steal his horse, all in pieces, looking like they had been ripped apart instead of cut into pieces. He looked at his hands and saw them ceasing an unusual glow that was red. His mare, Rumi, unscathed by whatever had happened, coming toward him and nuzzling his head.

"Death?" He heard Mako say to him, appearing on his left side. "What did you do?"

"I… I did what I had to in order to protect Rumi," he told him. "One of them called me by that old name that means nothing to me…but a reason to condemn them to the darkness."

"Yet, you did something that you never demonstrated after becoming a Horseman of the Restorative. You…unleashed tentacles from somewhere and they…ripped everyone to pieces…and you have no awareness of this?"

"I wasn't knocked out like last time, but I saw something that seemed to obscure my awareness of what I did. I saw…myself…and I was saying things that didn't make any sense. I kept saying that the flesh is weak, seeking release, but they won't let it die."

"That's unusually similar to a daydream I had recently, before I came to after following you into the purgatory we are now dealt with until further notice. I saw myself in the primordial fluids of Lilith, saying that the flesh had grown weak, seeing the bliss of oblivion, but someone, also identified as 'they', wouldn't let it die." Mako revealed. "That didn't make any sense to me."

"Well…flesh is weak, and that's a fact. You can cut flesh, and it heals slowly. You can take one's arm or leg off, and a new one won't grow in its place to replace the one that's missing."

"Yeah, obviously. Well, we know who to turn to for answers when we know no clear explanation."

"We do…but let's not ask for such until we actually need such. There are other places on this archipelago to see."

Mako nodded his baby head in acceptance and disappeared from sight, leaving Death and Rumi alone.

Death slowly turned to get on the saddle, but stopped when he stepped on the shotgun that was used on him, and picked it up. It was broken, like something ripped it in half with enough force to crush a car, and the horseman thought back to when he was alive…and had acquired the darker means to carry out his vengeance against his mortal enemy and those of the flesh that stood against him. While he might've carried a sickle as his weapon as a horseman, he may have had to own up to a harsh fact that followed him to his purgatory: It had been easier for him to use firearms when he came to possess them. The fact that he carried a sickle seemed to represent a return to the old ways of conflict, where one had to get close enough to your opponent to inflict serious harm before the development of the bow and arrow, the symbolized weapons of Conquest. And then…he threw the damaged weapon away, as it couldn't serve any other purpose than as a piece of discarded metal.

"Next stop…anywhere but here," he announced, and Rumi reared up and galloped towards the next part of Japan that held some interest that included the important, final road in life: Death.

-x-

"Achoo!" Mana sneezed again, and then got out of bed. "Ohh…at least it's not as bad as the last week. People are starting to recover after plenty of bed rest."

She entered her bathroom and used the toilet to empty her bladder of tonight's dinner, which included more vitamin pills to boost her recovery. During the entire two-week road to recovery, she couldn't stop thinking about the former Third Child. No…she couldn't stop thinking about the Horseman of Death, who continued to make himself known to the whole of Japan, one city at a time. Just two days ago, she heard about a criminal being beheaded in a grocery store by a boy with a sickle. She felt that he was venting his rage at people that were, lack of a better word, bad, just like how he murdered those men that kidnapped, raped and videotaped those women that he found in Nagoya.

_Death is to be considered an enemy to all forms of life,_ she thought, getting up from off the toilet and flushing away her last meal. _But Death hasn't murdered a lot of people from the places he's visited. Maybe the bad people, but he left the innocent ones alive. He got help for those women, saved the people in that store…and all the police from any of the cities he's been to are wondering what to make of him: A wannabe vigilante that was declared dead the day he murdered his father…or a vengeful ghost that seeks to continue killing…long after his vendetta had been fulfilled? Why has he truly come back? What is he after, if he's after anything?_

Then, after washing her hands and getting a drink of water, Mana had the craziest of ideas run through her conscious mind: What better way for her to understand the Horseman of Death…than to meet with the Horseman of Death…in person? A crazy idea, it was, but one that might've helped to satisfy her need for questions that needed to be answered. It was better than not knowing anything about anything. Her grandfather once told her that, should she ever encounter an enemy of sorts, she should try to understand her enemy as best she could.

She grabbed her shoes and coat and stepped out of her room. With the majority of the security personnel still sick, it was easy for her to sneak away from the Geo-Front, though she suspected that the sounds of moving machinery, such as an elevator, would alert those awake that somebody was up and about around NERV. But once she stepped foot into Tokyo-3 for the first time in her twelve-year-old life, none of that was going to matter for her. She never imagined for the city that the former Third Child rendered into a ghost town to be so…quiet.

As she walked down the streets, getting a better look at the majority of the parts of the city that wasn't damaged by either the Angel or people, she made sure to keep her distant from the Angel that she was told by the other horsemen was showing a measure of leniency toward. At the same time, hoping her presence was enough to bring Death to her.

"Brrr," she shivered a bit from the cold. "What'd I do to be in the sunlight. Achoo!"

NEIGH! She heard the neighing of a horse, and thought to what was written about the Horseman of Death, hundreds of generations ago.

"…_I looked and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hell was following close behind him."_ She recalled those exact words from the _Book of Revelation_. _"…and Hell was following close behind him."_

The sound of galloping feet got louder as she stood under a streetlight, making her presence known and easy to see for the man she wanted to meet in person. Her heart was racing as the additional sounds of snorting and the unsheathing of a blade came; she couldn't deny that he was in the city…and was nearby now.

A pale horse came from around a street corner down the street from where she stood…and its rider saw her, holding a sickle that glistened under the light of the moon.

"Oh!" Mana sighed, holding onto the streetlight.

-x-

Death looked down at the girl and wondered why she was in this pitiful city. At first, he wanted to assume that she was just a runaway that left an abusive home and strayed into an abandoned city that was no-man's land. But then he recognized the stink of blood that was on her, not at all different from the spot where he fell from mortality, and realized that she was one of them. One of those fools that rode in a behemoth that was a mockery of another behemoth of a higher authority. This made him frustrated to know that people continued to persist against those that were either overestimated or underestimated of their unpredictability, just as he had been.

"I hope you can give me a good reason not to condemn you to the next world," he told her.

Mana sneezed and snorted, sucking up the snot that was leaking out of her nose, and responded, "On my world as a young woman…and a fellow Japanese native, I'm not here to disrespect your authority. I'm only here to talk."

Death then became accompanied by his twin, who appeared in front of Mana and him.

"She's telling the truth, brother," Mako expressed, which surprised Mana; she never expected to see a ghost baby appear…and be able to talk.

"Oh, Kami," she shuddered, and then Death put his sickle away.

"You don't appear to converse unless it's whenever I need to speak with you or in the presence of the other horsemen," he spoke to Mako. "How can you be sure she's here to…just talk?"

"I'm sure that if anyone wanted to assault or entrap Death, the Endgame, they would've came prepared…and not getting over a sickness dealt to them by Conquest." He told him.

The next thing that happened was that Rumi came nuzzled the right side of Mana's neck.

"Oh…" Mana moaned in fear; she never thought this could happen to her before, not even by a horse associated to one that was either good or bad.

"Well, Rumi seems to like you," said Death to the girl. "Okay. I will hear you. So…whenever you're ready to talk…and whenever Rumi stops greeting you."

The pale horse then backed away from Mana, and the girl let go of the streetlight.

"Okay," she inhaled, beginning her talk with the Horseman of Death, "my name is Mana Asagi. I was contacted by a paramilitary agency to deal with a threat made by unknown monsters called Angels. My priority was only to protect people from certain doom by an enemy that was believed to want the end of the world…until you came along. You seem to know the truth to what's really going on, and that's what I really want to know…if you'll tell me, please."

Death looked at her, then at Mako and then at Rumi, whom was sitting on the ground. Then…he moved under the streetlight and toward the wall of the building on the sidewalk and sat against it.

"I am Death, the Endgame," he introduced himself to her. "I am a member of the Four Horsemen of the Restorative, charged with the almost impossible purpose of fulfilling an almost ignored goal to heal the Earth…and the lives that were taken because of the violence instigated by mortals that seek an end to all forms of mortal freedom…and the negatives of individuality and mortality. Whoever's Hell-bent on triggering world-wide genocide is hiding in the shadows of the public, using vast resources, including scientists, finances, politicians, the military. They practically own the world in secret…but that's going to end soon."

"And the Angels?" Mana asked.

"They are here with a similar purpose, to heal the Earth. But as part of the mortal coil, they need to be protected from external harm that can send their souls back to the realm that is Heaven. They are necessary in undoing the pain that the planet suffers from. The extensive deforestation attempts, the massive firestorms caused by bombings, the fallout and pollution, the loss of animal and plant life. Once all eight points are selected by eight Angels, all the death and destruction will be undone, the lost souls will rise from the afterlife and the planet will breathe again. But until that day comes, the Angels must be protected from harm by the Four Horsemen. They come to a chosen destination, clear out as many lives as possible to ensure that they are protected against harm…and the horsemen arrive soon after to clear out the people that haven't left…by any means necessary, including murder…if it gets the word out to others that their city, their town, wherever people live…is no longer their domain until after we're done with it."

"So, then…since you're Death, it's obvious that your methods are all murder-based, aren't they?"

"Yes…and no. Tokyo-3 is my protectorate until I get informed of the next location chosen by an Angel, and it was abandoned, emptied by me before I drew my last breath. Eight locations, four lost souls chosen to be horsemen to ensure the Angels are kept protected, assigned to protect two of the Angels of the two locations they are assigned. I've just made it a minor habit of murdering those with dark intentions in whichever city I visit that's on this pitiful archipelago until I am assigned my next Angel to protect from harm."

"And…once you've all achieved your goal, once you've healed the Earth…what then for you?"

"Could you elaborate?"

"I mean, what becomes of you after you've done all that you're tasked with doing? Do you…just go back to wherever you were sent to after you died? Do you just…fade from existence?"

"_He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster,"_ went Mako, _"and when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."_

"_Beyond Good and Evil _by Friedrich Nietzsche," Mana responded to the baby's quoting of an old philosophy. "How does that answer my question?"

"It's already too late for the both of us to return to our previous lives, the ones that were taken from us," Mako explained, "but, in exchange for our help in achieving this goal, we have been promised a right to live again, either through resurrection, which is the path we're not interested in taking, or reincarnation, the path to new life that isn't tied to the previous one you no longer have. That's a reward and a damnation…far more positive than we have experienced in our state of purgatory."

"Reincarnation's like…like a clean slate, where your soul is deprived of the past you lived in so that you may live, unbound by the nightmares that were lived in the last life. People believed that we can die thousands of time…and be born and reborn thousands of time. But for a few, just a few, have to perform various tasks set upon them in order to earn the rights to a new life. I never believed it to be true…until I met you two."

"If we've truly lived more than once," went Death, reminded of his previous visits from faces of another universe where he had known a good life, "it surely wasn't around here that we did."

"Ahh," Mana yawned; unlike the Horseman of Death, she was still alive and needed things necessary for her livelihood, like more sleep and time recover from an illness that still afflicted her immune system. "Sorry. I should get going. I still have a bad cold and I don't want to infect you with it."

"We're dead," Death told her. "There's no one to infect."

Mana then got up and walked away, but then stopped.

"I, uh… It was nice to speak with you, Death, the Endgame," she told the horseman. "Thank you for your time."

As he climbed back onto the saddle, Death looked at her, but whatever words that could've reached his mouth never came.

"You'll have to forgive my brother," went Mako. "It's not easy for him to say kind words…but in time…with patience…you'll likely hear him say such words. Purgatory's as much an opportunity to redeem a lost soul than it is to condemn one. Do take care, miss…uh…"

"Asagi. Mana Asagi."

"Mako. No last name. Just Mako."

Mana then ran off, wondering how long it would be before anyone found out she was not in the Geo-Front and in the city that was off-limits. She'd probably get hammered for risking her life just to speak to Death about what could've been seen as valuable information in proving that NERV was facing an enemy they simply couldn't beat…and one of them was Death. Literally. The Grim Reaper incarnate.

A/N: Another chapter bites the flesh. I bet none of you expected Shinji/Death to experience incapacitation like that. Well, I have more in store. There will be plenty to partake on in this season in between now and until the next two Angels arrive to select the last two places to be used. Until the next chapter. Peace out.


End file.
